: The Black Dahlia
This is a strange film. In so many ways it’s old school, a classic film noir with great visuals and mysterious characters. But in other ways it’s much too modern, with an overly convoluted plot, multiple “surprise” endings, and too much gore and sex. The story’s supposed to be about the murder of a girl, but that storyline only takes about 20 percent of the film — the rest is about the lives of the police detectives we don’t really care about (though in the end their personal lives end up being part of the mystery). The problem is everything’s so dark and mysterious and we don’t know where the story’s going or who’s good or who’s bad, that we end up not caring about anything. We don’t care about the police, who seem corrupt; we don’t care about the dead girl, who’s too sad and strange to be likable. We just don’t care. And in the end, we don’t even care about the messed up ending.
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