Style isn't everything in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, but it certainly counts for a lot. A lush homage to all things noir, De Palma's film takes as its springboard James Ellroy's fictionalized account of one of L.A.'s most famous unsolved crimes — the grisly 1947 murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth "Betty" Short — and then proceeds to pump up the darkness to nearly operatic proportions.
The Black Dahlia unfolds in an opulently decadent, morally cracked L.A. defined by shady deals and dominated by a collusion of corrupt cops, gangsters and card-carrying perverts of every stripe. At the center of the movie is a triangle consisting of the two investigating homicide detectives — a pair of former boxers nicknamed "Fire" and "Ice" (Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart) — and the beautiful hooker-turned-homemaker (Scarlett Johansson) who is their mutual object of desire. There are mirrored stories within stories here too, and the movie's carefully designed symmetry contrasts Johansson's cool blonde with a dark dragon lady (Hilary Swank) whose resemblance to the dead girl yields more than a few secrets.
De Palma and screenwriter Josh Friedman pile on the complications, with nasty bits of business and eccentric peripheral characters appearing at every turn (although, as in most worthy noirs, it's the periphery that ultimately amounts to the center). The movie practically disappears in its own frantic convolutions by the end, but it hardly matters. De Palma is in top form here, with several brilliantly choreographed set pieces establishing the tone, and a monochromatic palette (by master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond) that's about as close as a color film can get to black-and-white. As for the performances, Hartnett struggles a bit with the whole world-weary shtick, but most of the other performances are just fine, and Scarlett Johansson, resplendent in '40s fashions and hair-dos, looks just like an old-school movie star when the camera caresses her in a series of glamorous close-ups.
The Black Dahlia 3.5 stars (R) Stars Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank and Mia Kirshner. Opens Sept. 15 at local theaters.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.