The Black Dahlia: B-

Brian De Palma is the unchallenged master of pulp fiction. His flashy camera sequences layered over unbelieveably over the top sex and violence go perfect when interspersed with the stylized dialogue and characters of a 1940's noir film. And for the first part of "The Black Dahlia" things seem to be going his way. The material, James Elroy's sprawling crime novel, and the original story itself (young starlet wannabe is found mutilated and toruted in L.A.), is dark enough for even the most hard-boiled of noirs. The cast is even better than the material, Josh Hartnett with his boyish looks and leaden screen presence takes time to warm to his part but by the end of the movie his role is more memorable than several other key players, and Scarlett Johansson and Mia Kirshner take to their roles like oxygen. The actual movie follows two L.A. detectives: Lee (Aaron Eckhart, amazingly good at mania) and Bucky (Josh Hartnett) as they try and unravel the murder of Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner). All the while the two of them are invested in a menaiage a tois with Lee's live in love Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). Lee, hopped up on pills, goes crazy with the Dahlia case while Bucky has to contend with Madeline (Hilary Swank), a bisexual praying mantis, and her crazily surreal family. The one scene where we meet them all for the first time, in Madeline's "father's" gothic mansion is one of the most surreal, engrossing, and hilarious scenes of the entire movie, maybe of the year. As you can see the set-up is perfect for the ultimate B-movie director to make the ultimate B-movie: starry and acomplished cast, dark plot, violence, sex. However by the last act of the movie everything has been derailed. The word hijinks comes to mind. As a murder mystery the audience feels cheated that key players who have very little to do in the movie suddenly end up explaining it all. In short, we shouldn't be asking questions like "who's he again?" or "now how did she know that girl?" during the Grand Explanation. The movie is held together by the most tenuous of threads and all the guilty pleasure we get from the movie is just ruined. And in a pulp fiction when the guilty pleasure goes away you know there is a problem.