THE BLACK DAHLIA
DVD Review by David Blackwell
DETAILS: 122 minutes,3 featurettes
VIDEO:
2.35:1 (Anamorphic Widescreen)
AUDIO: English 5.1DD, French 5.1 DD, Spanish 2.0 DD
Subtitles: English SDH,
French, Spanish
STUDIO: Universal/ Nu Image/Millennium Films/SignaturePictures/Equity Pictures
RELEASE DATE:
12-26-2006
THE BLACK DAHLIA is an aimless mess half of the time. The first half hour is solid before it begins
to drift. By 90 minutes in, every other scene made me want THE BLACK DAHLIA to end while the next scene pulled me back in.
Lee Blachard (Aaron Eckhart) and Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) are partners in LA's Robbery Homicide unit in the
late 1940s. They hang together as a trio with Blachard's girlfriend, Kay (Scarlett Johansson). Then the crap hits the fan
when a young aspiring actress (Mia Kirshner) is murdered in a very gruesome manner. Blachard's relationship with Kay gets
rocky and Bucky gets involved with the dead girl's lookalike, Madeleine (Hilary Swank) who has a connection to the case and
will get in deeper as everyone dances around to come together by the last half hour.
The plot sounds good, but the
movie is director Brian DePalma's muddled mess that should have been much better than this end result. It makes me want to
go read the noval (despite some great dialogue in the film) it is based on which is a fictionalized tale of the real Black
Dahlia murder which would make a great movie in itself.
The threee featurettes are very interesting to watch especially
the one about the real Black Dahlia case and the novel by James Ellroy (REALITY & FICTION: THE STORY OF THE BLACK DAHLIA).
THE CASE FILE has the cast and crew talk about the script, costumes, and characters while THE DePALMA TOUCH goes into the
technical side of the production. So rent THE BLACK DAHLIA or wait for HOLLYWOODLAND on DVD next month.
his review
is (c)1-16-2007 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission (except for excerpts and a link to the review).
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