Wow...L.A. Confidential is unfocused? I would consider it to be one of the better book-to-film screenplays that's been done in the past 25 years.
The plot was all over the place. But of course you'd love it. You have a hard on for that time period.
I do like noir films, but L.A. Confidential was ranked as #60 on the Writers Guild top 100 screenplays. It has a deserved reputation for a well constructed storyline and dialogue. It's also got a 99% rating from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's not just me.
Writing tends to be one of the greatest strengths of the genre of Film Noir. That is the genre that is best known for the memorable plot twists and surprises. L.A. Confidential mimics the style and look of older Film Noir movies, but it was a very strong movie independent of that. It was far more than a mere homage to the classics.
I thought the film had way too much going on, and only somewhat came together at the end as a coherent whole. In many ways it was a well made film. It had some good acting, captured the period well, and had a pretty good shootout at the end. But I found it meandering, very boring in parts, and much too long. They could have cut 45 minutes from the running time, and the film would have lost nothing of importance. It was badly written and badly edited IMO. .... Cube Lots of howlingly bad acting from Canadian no talent nobodies and a two cent Star Trek episode caliber premise about people trapped in a maze by aliens or the evil government or something that gets stale after five minutes. It's made worse by a character who's full retard who smacks himself in the face and goes "heeeeeeeeeeeee!" for the better part of the movie. I'm not really sure how this has a 7.5 on IMDB. In fact, this movie was so laughably bad I'm tempted to add it to the worst movies of all time thread.
Lockout: A future space prison theme film. Was your usual fast paced craptastic film but it was alright.
Maybe incoherent isn't the right term. It had a lot of extraneous plot threads. It was basically a movie about police corruption at the highest levels. But it had a number of plot threads that seemed like pointless dead ends, like the hookers who looked like movie stars or the trashy tabloid thing with Danny Devito. Like I said, there was just too much going on, and a lot of it wasn't important to the overall plot about police corruption. And the police corruption plot was barely explored. It just sort of comes up at the end. The film lacked focus. It needed tighter editing and writing. It was meandering and all over the place. When I don't even know what a movie is about until two thirds of the way through, it's doing something wrong.
Only tangentially really, while the corruption isn't explored that much. The police chief just randomly shoots a guy out of nowhere. There's no indication before that point that he was corrupt, aside from the usual police stuff. At least none that I saw. Certainly no indication that he was some crime kingpin.
Tangentially???? Devito and Spacey's characters were directly connected to the corruption storyline from beginning to end. That's why both Spacey and Devito's characters end up that way...and it's not hidden from the audience. I'm starting to think you expected it to be an action movie and just weren't paying much attention throughout.
I'll admit, the movie was a real snoozer that didn't hold my attention all that well through the middle parts. But that's the movie's fault. I'm not some dudebro with a two second attention span, so if I'm tuning out, it must be pretty damn boring. I'm the only person I know of IRL for instance who's managed to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy without falling asleep.
I gave valid criticisms of the film. That's hardly something a dudebro would do. A dudebro would just say something like, yeah that movie was boring brah, I totally fell asleep.
Your criticisms amount to a complete misunderstanding of how the story elements relate to each other. The idea that the tabloid storyline with Devito and the prostitution storyline with Basinger were "pointless dead ends" is simply wrong.
Tangential, pointless dead ends. Yeah pretty much. Good movies generally have focused, cohesive plots. LA Confidential didn't. 6/10 IMO, mostly for the some of the acting.
here we go again lol we know, you follow popular opinion like a sheep and LOVE the classics. We went over this.
Sorry, but you just flat out didn't understand what you were watching. They're directly connected to the main storyline.
Connected, but tangential. And the main corruption plot is barely explored because so much time is wasted on pointless tangents. The police chief is the main villain, yet we know next to nothing about him. He just becomes this cartoonish villain character out of nowhere in the last 20 or so minutes. That's just flat out bad writing.
The plot of a film and the relationship of the characters isn't an opinion. It's part of the screenplay.