L.A. Confidential MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +3 Content: -3

Los Angeles in the early 50's. A booming city anxious to shed its small-town skin. Through a combination of hype and the pervasive presence of television, L.A. is being touted as a potential utopia and the metropolis of the future. It's practically paradise on Earth. That's the image, but the reality is something different. From its fabulous mansions to its sizzling nightclubs, it's a city of corruption, double-dealing, and dangerous passions. Police officer Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is a cop on the rise. Officer Bud White (Russell Crowe) is in a downward spiral. And Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacy) is a celebrity cop who gives the tabloids what they want -- compromising pictures of Hollywood higher-ups. All three find themselves tangled in an already-solved murder case that just won't go away. And before long, they realize the blood trail leads all the way to the Police Chief's office. It's a dramatic tale as the men must stay alive long enough to bag the bad guys. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL will draw large audiences as Kim Basinger stuns viewers as Lynn Bracken. Exley and White fire more weaponry than Mafia thugs. And most importantly, viewers get a sneak peek behind the curtain of the Hollywood scene.

This movie has it all: sex, violence, and foul language. Despite the fact that this is the 50's, the language of the 90's pervades with 15 crude words, 44 obscenities, and 10 profanities. Mafia-style shootings abound, and viewers get close-ups of bloody and bludgeoned bodies. The death toll rises continually in the film with point-blank executions, hand-to-hand fights, and beatings. The flow of blood stems only to give way to sex as prostitutes who are surgically altered to look like movie stars invite men into their homes with regularity. The sex is implied in all but one scene, but viewers still get an eyeful of nudity in police photographs taken during a raid of a brothel. But all of this takes place away from the public's eyes. As the local rag says, "It's off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush." And this film and its viewers would have been better off if it had remained that way.

Preview Reviewer: Jason Shepherd
Distributor: Warner Brothers, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522