Then it's a bad screenplay that should have been rewritten. I was bored, and didn't even know what the movie was about until two thirds of the way through. I also don't see why Kim Bassinger got an Oscar. Her performance wasn't that great. And on top of everything else, the movie literally does degenerate into a dudebro buddy cop shootout movie at the end. So arguing that this is some kind of intellectual film that I couldn't possibly comprehend is a bit laughable.
The entire film is centered around the main corruption plot. All of the elements tie into it. That's what's so bizarre about your comments. How did you ever watch a film like The Godfather and understand it? "OMG, there were so many characters and branches of the storyline. I was bored. I just wanted them to be over with so that they could get to the Mafia part at the end."
The Godfather has a focused, cohesive narrative about Michael Coreleone and his rise to power, and the subplots feed into it. I wasn't sitting there for hours trying to figure out what the hell I was watching or why any of it was important.
L.A. Confidential outlines the main story element (does the name Mickey Cohen ring a bell?) within the opening sequence of the film. I'm not really sure how you could have been struggling to figure out what the movie was about for "hours". It does have some complexity, but it's not any more complex than The Godfather. And the screenplay won an Academy Award.
I'm not going to get into an endless debate about this. LA Confidential just wasn't that good. You love Noir films so you can probably overlook its flaws. I just couldn't. It's a messy film, and it literally turns into a 1950s version of Beverly Hills Cop or Bad Boys at the end.
There's nothing to debate. You didn't even know how Hush Hush or the prostitution ring tied into the main storyline, which basically means you weren't paying attention.
I didn't care. The movie was fucking boring. It was a total snoozefest up until the end when it got really dumb and turned into a standard buddy cop shoot em up. Unironically, that also describes LA Noire, which was based on this film. In fact, I'm lowering the score to a 4/10.
I'm sure if someone claimed that Breaking Bad was boring and poorly written, and then was unable to even accurately describe the relationship of the main characters to the story...cue the ballistic dudebro rants.
Nic Cage was ok in this movie where he had long hair and killed people in some asian country. That one was pretty recent. I thought LA Confidential was good. But it is definitely a film you have to be in the mood to watch or you won't want to pay attention.
I always thought Star Wars was pretty boring and poorly written. I mean, you've got these pointless, tangential characters like Ben Kenobi. They make it seem like he's important, and they've got to find him, and he's talking, talking, talking and then he just ends up dead. It's soooo confusing! And then it makes me sleepy. Lucas should have put in more tie-fighter stuff instead of wasting time on some character that just dies and doesn't relate to the main story about blowing up the Death Star.
All I got from the last few pages of this thread were tangentially and boring. Also don't try to argue with a monkey. It cannot be reasoned with.
Star Wars actually is poorly written, especially the prequels. The overall universe and themes are good, but it has a lot of truly awful dialogue. The actors do what they can with it, but it's still really bad in places. And the prequels actually do waste a lot of time on pointless tangents instead of focusing on how Anakin became Vader. The entire first movie about little kids pod racing is a pointless tangent that never should have been made at all. The first half of Attack of the Clones is a waste of time. Then they run out of time and try to wrap everything up in the last ten minutes of the third movie, and it doesn't work or make a whole lot of sense. Lucas has good ideas, but he can't write his way out of a nutsack. He either needed to have someone else write the prequels or have other writers help him stay focused. He got totally ADD with Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, and neither movie is of any real consequence. But I guess his huge ego wouldn't allow him to accept help, so the prequels ended up sucking and feeling like a wasted opportunity. Star Wars is actually a horrible example of whatever you're trying to say, because the prequels are just like LA Confidential. Too many pointless tangents, and too little meat to the main story.
In order to criticize L.A. Confidential's story, you need to at least be able to accurately describe how each character fits into the plot. That's the point I'm making regarding Star Wars. Saying that Danny Devito's tabloid character or Kim Basinger's prostitute character were "pointless dead ends" that didn't tie in to the main storyline is like saying Ben Kenobi didn't tie in to the original Star Wars plot. For example, within the first five minute of the movie, Mickey Cohen is identified as having controlled L.A. organized crime, including PROSTITUTION, and that his conviction on tax evasion charges created a power vacuum in terms of who would control L.A. organized crime (which is what Dudley turns out to have been trying to do...install himself as the boss). So it literally makes no sense whatsoever to claim that Basinger or the prostitution elements were unrelated to the main story.
It's related, but it's a tangent of no real consequence. A good writer would have maybe included five minutes of the police talking to the prostitutes and the brothel owner, and gotten back to the main story instead of derailing the movie with things that don't matter. I swear some of these filmmakers need to take a writing class. They make rookie mistakes.
"I didn't pay attention to the movie" isn't a valid criticism. Basinger's character and the prostitution ring were directly connected to how Dudley was eventually exposed. It's not debatable, just like it's not debatable that Ben Kenobi wasn't a "tangent" in the original Star Wars.
I have a longer attention span than 99.9% of the population, so if the movie was boring me, that's the movie's problem, not mine. If I'm struggling to stay awake and pay attention, you fucked up writing your movie, because the average dudebro would already be asleep while I'm just sitting there bored. LA Confidential was badly written and boring. It lacked focus, and then resorted to buddy cop cliches and a Big Cheese villain to try to tie everything together at the end, but with little success. It was not a good movie. The critics were wrong. You're hilarious. You just can't accept that someone would think one of your precious movies sucks balls.
Your attention span was MIA on this one. You can't accurately describe the relationship of the characters to the storyline. Try and find a review of this film that identifies Danny Devito and Kim Basinger's characters as being "dead ends" or "tangents" of no consequence to the main story. I can accept that you personally found it boring. But the relationship of the characters to the storyline doesn't involve personal opinion.
I think you just have an extremely high tolerance for boring and bad movies. It probably comes from watching all of that 50s crap from before movies became watchable to modern audiences. Look, let's do a little experiment. Let's have Armadeadn watch LA Confidential. I guarantee you he falls asleep.