Erica, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I know you're not online. You're
not You're less online than me. Something happened online yesterday that I'm ninety nine
point nine percent sure you're unaware of, and I want to let you know
about it. Okay, I can tell you I'm one hundred percent before I'm
unaware because I have no idea. You're talking perfect. Something went viral,
and the thing that went viral was from KVOA News for Tucson breaking news.
Tucson teacher loses job over OnlyFans account. Boom, right, we's sex positive
here, that's bullshit. Pay teachers more. Maybe they will need to set
up only fans account to pay their rent. And then you click on it
and you realize that the Tucson teacher that was fired for having an only fans
account is none other than get this, Rachel Dolazol, whoa who is now
going by the name I apologize for this pronunciation and catchy diallo, which means
she is still appropriating. She's still pretending to be black. Yeah, okay,
okay, look, I don't blame OnlyFans. I don't blame Rachel Dole
even I blame I blame Tucson News for burying the fucking lame. Your headline
writer, I've never seen a headline so missed the fucking point of the story.
She read. She's back, Rachel Dolizala is back. She's back.
Still not black, but she's back. Yeah. I remember the last time
we all agreed on something, and it was that this woman was fucking weird.
Well, let's deconstruct this story for a second, A hot second.
A. She's still doing her weird fucking thing. There are better people than
me to discuss, absolutely right, But here's what I want to discuss.
Who hired her to teach? And what is she teaching? Because when you
said teacher gets fired, I was legitimately picturing like a second grade teacher.
Yeah, who has to do only fans on the side, or maybe wants
to do only fans on the side, I don't know, and like and
like they're like, but WoT someone think of the children? And now I'm
like, but what someone think of the children? For God's sakes? If
she is teaching African Americans? Holy shit, Hey, I'm Paul, and
this is that aged Well yesterday's pop culture. Today we are in murder mystery
March Erica. But I have a missive for you from so much alliteration.
I love tones. I have a missive for you from our listeners. If
you'll remember, we did Purple Rain. No, Paul, have no memory.
Its mystery to me. We were talking about how Purple Rain didn't when
the best song oscar and Against All Odds came up, and you said,
what was that from? And I said, I don't know. Oh,
I actually know now someone in my family told me, and I felt like
a schmuck for not realizing it. Yeah, somewhere between six and four thousand
people emailed us to tell us the song Against All Odds is from the movie
Against All Odds? Yeah, yeah, that actually that tracks what song was
Beauty and the Beast in? What song is that? That's a good movie?
Is that in? It's Okay, Paul, did you look up Against
All Odds? I did, and I want to read you and everyone the
synopsis and IMDb. Can I tell you I'm choosing not to look it up.
I was going to ask you, thinking that I was going to do
exactly what you're doing right now. Okay. A gangster hires an ex football
player to find his girlfriend. When he finds her, they fall in love
and the twists start to appear, all of it, all of it.
Now, we have to do it, now, we have to do it
on the podcast. Oh god, Paul, have you seen this? The
cast? It's Jeff Bridges. I know that Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward,
James Woods, boo. But Jane Greer and Richard Windmark we're in this movie.
Okay, So now we know what movie Against All Odds is from.
It is from Against As. We have Susie sighting, we have Swoozie sighting,
we have sabk All right, let's watch the shit out of this.
Let's do this. Let's do it. I'm in Let's do it, all
right, Erica. Before we get to our murder mystery for the day,
we do have a five star Apple podcast review? Shall I read to you?
Sure? This is from ains Lovey? And they write, where has
this pod been my whole life? Where have we been your whole life?
We've only been around since twenty nineteen. We're very young. Before that,
we were probably just I don't know, getting high and watching movies. Yeah,
sums it up, Uh, they write, I just discovered this pod
two days ago. I binged about seven episodes in two days. Wow,
good for you. Oh. I loved the Mermaid's episode as well as the
Goodfellas and far Scump episodes. Three excellent choices. I will say that also,
like there's no Venn diagram of those films that's correct, like except that
we covered them like there's nothing nothing in common. They're right. I am
hooked. I am so happy I found this pod. You two are absolutely
brilliant, and I love these reviews. All of my favorite movies heart emoji,
heart emoji, heart emoji, kissy winky face emoji. I love kissy
winky face. Kissy winky face is my favorite. It is a dangerous emoji,
though, because if you send it to the wrong person at the wrong
time, you're like, I didn't mean that to come off creepy, you
know. I meant that to be loving, not like I was. That
was more of an air kiss, not a kiss. Yeah, it wasn't
a tony figure out a way to show us air kiss in an emoji like
these like the mean girls love Yeah, what like that they do that?
But an emoji an emoji, I don't think there is one, and we
need one. Yeah, Tim Cook, I know you're listening. That should
be your top priority, some kind somehow make an air kiss emoji. Yes,
please cut you all the emails were about to receive explaining to us how
to do an arkis emoji. Oh my god, we get it. We're
middle aged, Ains Lovey. Thank you so much for this review. Thank
you for binging seven episodes in two days. I really am. I love
hearing that. I love that hearing that people enjoy us. Did you hear
the tension in the Mermaids episode? I remember us fighting over something there that
was that was That was a spicy one we did. We disagreed about how
the ending of Mermaids played, but we agreed about a lot of episodes which
we should be punished for having sex. That's what That's what I remember that.
Yeah, that's what you remember? Sure sure sure, sure, Ains
Lovey. If you would like ate that, h bel tope, eag please
reach out let us know this is you. We would so love to send
it to you. Erica. What is our murder mystery for today? Speaking
of spicy episodes, because I think we're going to disagree on this film.
Yeah. Probably Today's film is the nineteen ninety seven neo noir crime thriller La
Yes. La Confidential was requested by Mary and by Brian. Brian has requested
before. I want to remind everyone he is at zoo draws underscore comic on
Instagram. And if you don't love cheeky comics featuring animals that are about conserving
the earth, what are you even doing here? Go follow Brian on Instagram.
All right, So, La Confidential was written by Brian Oh God,
hell Gland, that's close enough, Yeah, and Curtis Hansen, based on
the nineteen ninety novel of the same name by James Elroy. It was directed
by Hanson and stars Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger,
David straight Aairn, James Cromwell, and Danny DeVito. Quite a cast.
I know I've forgotten David straight Aaron was in this and I like squealed
when I saw him, squealed it legitimately loved everything he did. Yeah.
Also, I'm going to put the cart far ahead of the horse here.
But in terms of men's fashion, he's the only one that skates away scott
free in this film, only one, I think, because to wear those
fifties you have to be tall and like things well. Also because his character
was sort of a dandy, so he didn't have to wear those dumb boxy
suits that everyone else wore. He got to wear a sweater so you couldn't
see that his pants were hitting above his belly button like that. Yeah,
he's wearing the nineteen fifties version of asked leisure, which is the only good
look for men in the fifties. La Confidential was nominated for nine to count
them, nine Academy Awards, winning for Best Supporting Actress Kim Basinger Basinger,
Bassinger Basinger. But I'm not honestly sure. I think it's basing Ger.
I think you're right. I think it's a hard girl. It's a girl,
it's a hard gut, it's a girl. And Best Adapted Screenplay.
It lost in every other category too. It's film doppelganger Titanic, basically the
same movie, pretty much one to one, one to one having watched this
movie, and I know this is kind of a not a controversial win.
I don't think anyone's angry about Kim Basinger having an oscar. But like I
remember the tell of people being surprised that it was more of like a oh
for this kind of feel. Yeah, and like, having watched the movie,
I she's good. I have no issue with Kim Basinger's performance, but
I do understand the question because I'm like this, this is Joan Cusack for
in an ounce here, and that's a towering comic performance. Yeah. So
I have a theory that she got the Oscar for being married to Alec Baldwin.
I think you know how Hollywood is like an inside baseball town. Yeah,
yeah, business, They're like, she's married to that fucking nightmare.
Let's give an Oscar. She deserves it, She's she has kept him contained
for a decade. Yeah. We all know now what happens when Alec Baldwin
is not married to Kim Basinger, and I think we all preferred it when
he was Oh god, people lose their lives. Oh, I wasn't even
afraid to. I was referrad to the fact that his thirty year old wife
keeps popping out kids like she's a log flume. Like just oh, I
s thinking about all the all the paparazzi for which you know, what if
you're going to beat someone up. I'm not mad at it, but I
think we can both agree he's probably a pretty lousy person to have to live
with. I've heard. I've heard a lot of stories about Alec Baldwin that
way, before the whole rust thing that implied that he was not pleasant.
Also, to be clear, I actually don't think he did anything. I
don't think he meant to hurt anyone. Of course not. I feel actually
bad for they feel genuinely horrible for him, because it must be I can't
even think about what that must be like. Agreed. However, also though,
also stop having kids, Stop having kids, and stop being a rage
monster. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna talk more about rage monsters in this
episode. Oh my god, we have the prototypic. Do you think that's
why she was so good this movie? She understood like can you can you
believably fall in love with a rage monster? She's like, bitch, watch
it all right. James L. Roy, the author of the novel upon
which this film was based, has expressed a wide range of opinions about it.
When it first premiered, he called it a work of art on its
own level. In twenty twenty three, he called it a turkey of the
highest form, about as deep as a tortilla. You know what what a
writer wants to be? Sassy? Yeah, they don't miss words are their
weapons. I put this in here because I am more of the twenty twenty
three James Elroy take on this movie, and I think Eric is a little
bit more of the earlier take on the movie. Is that correct? Think
we probably are going to come closer than we think in like terms of actual
opinion. I like the movie more than you do. I know I do.
I like the genre very much, and so I'm much more forgiving of
its, like piccadillos, like the way you love like you know, rom
coms have dumb premises, but you love them anyway. Right, Yeah,
totally. I am a crime thriller. There's gonna be holes in the plot.
I'm playing with it. I'm totally fine with it. That's totally fair,
totally fair. But yeah, so anyway, this is funny. La
Confidential has a ninety nine percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a ninety four
percent audience score. Shoppingly nothing for cherry Picks here. I looked on cherry
Picks. It does not feature. They didn't even touch it. They were
like, no, have we done a ninety nine percent critical rate they did
for his gunk get ninety nine. I don't even know. This is very
high, Like I don't know that we've ever done one this high. We've
gotten in the nineties before. Definitely. It also suffers a little bit from
like what I call like like twenty twenty syndrome, totally meaning like looking back
at something. Yeah. Yeah, it was nominated for an oscar it one
oscars. It was universally loved, and it's time and then you rewatch it
and you're like her, I guess, is she funny? Like great arrested
development, Paul perfect? Well done? Yeah her? Okay, yeah,
she must be. She has a sense of humor. She eats eggs all
in one in one in one bite, right, yeah, just like to
squeeze the mayonnaise packet into her mouth with the egg. Yeah that's kind Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I don't think ninety nine percent is exactly deserved,
Okay, but I actually would go high. I'd give it like an eighty
five ninety Okay. I think i'd be about it, like I don't think
the movie's bad. I want to be I don't think it's like a terrible
movie. I would probably give it seventy seventy five. Yeah. I don't
think the movies as ambitious as as people think it is. I think it's
trying to be a really serviceable period piece slash crime thriller. In the vein
of a Postman always rings twice kind of thing, right. I would totally
agree with what you say about like that rings very true to me, and
so for that, it like fulfills the bill for me, like it like
it checks all the all the boxes. Well, there's there's two boxes.
I would like to them to go back and check again. But other than
that, I think, really that box is empty. There's two boxes that
are like is that a check mark? Did you actually? It's like that
that scene in Succession? Did he underline or cross out Kendall's name? Yeah?
Is that a hanging chad on that one? What's going on here?
What does this mean? Yeah? Yeah, we'll get to those, we
will, we will. Erica, when did you first see La Confidential?
I saw in the theater. Okay, I still do like it very much.
I don't love it the way I loved it the first time I saw
it. The first time I saw it, I really loved it. I
don't know how many of its predecessors I had seen it like at that point,
so I don't know if I was like watching it and I was like,
oh, this is like a color version of those like nineteen thirties film
noirs, like I'd probably seen Malty's Falcon at the time and like stuff like
that, but not too many. And maybe I've seen it once in the
intervening years. Maybe, but I'm actually not one hundred percent on that.
And then I saw it for the second and or third time yesterday. Okay,
how about you, Paul, So this is this is going to back
up entirely what you were just saying about about the movie's ambitions. I had
never seen it, and I went into this one and I was expecting a
masterpiece on the level of like like a good Fella's That's what I was like
buckling myself down for and like like a really interesting, twisty mystery thriller.
Right. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I knew who the
murderer in this murder mystery was before the murder occurred. There is literally no
doubt in my mind. There was more doubt in my mind during So I
married an axe murderer about who the killer was and if you remember the killer,
and that was Amanda Plumber. So they were really telling you. The
first time I watched it, I'll be honest, I really I really didn't
like it because I just went my expectations were so not met. Yeah,
which isn't fair. It's not fair to the movie. That's like, that's
not the movie's fault. Really. So we talked and I was talking to
you about it, and I think I said to you, I was like,
I think I'm actually gonna like it much more on the second time because
I'll just know what I'm getting. And I watched it again and I did
like it a lot more. There it still irritates me more than irritates you
for all of those unchecked boxes that we were talking about, But I generally
liked it all right, Erica. The tagline for La Confidential was everything is
suspect, everyone is for sale, and nothing is what it seems. That's
a lot. It's a lot. And again, I knew who the murderer
was before the murder was committed. It's like I have found the big bad
of the movie. But did you know they were like four big bads that
was the thing that shocked me when I saw it. I was like,
how many of these people are evil? Again, I think, what what
you're talking about with the twenty twenty thing where I was like, they're all
terrible? The movie is very much about like police corruption like that, That's
what the movie is about, and level at every level, right, And
I think viewing it through the modern lens, when obviously the police have come
under a lot more scrutiny generally in the public in recent years, it was
like Okay, yeah, they're all terrible. There was no yeah, yeah,
which, which again isn't the movie's fault. It's just oh, you
know. What's interesting is I remember being more surprised than this. But again,
I was a teenager, sure, and b Like, it was the
nineties, and so that really wasn't so. I mean, it should have
been. It should have been on my mind given Rodney King. But I
was a kid, and so I was just like, oh, wow,
like this is really like, gosh, things you just used to be a
whole lot worse, didn't they? Yeah? Yeah, Uh do you want
to read the iTunes synopsis? Sure, I'm gonna do it. Like Danny
DeVito's character, please do Los Angeles, nineteen fifty three, Just beneath a
glamorous venier of Hollywood gossip and movie stars Liza, crime ridden city corrupt to
its core. Now, while investigating a brutal murder, three very different police
detectives will rediscover a common bond of integrity in the blockbuster film noir Thrilla La
Confidential. Well done, Well done, my friend? Actual synopsis. Finally
cops that are good at being cops? Am I right? Actual synopsis?
What if Iron Man, The Hulk and Captain America pre super Soldier Serum were
detectives in nineteen fifties Los Angeles? See go but also terrible people, But
terrible people, awful awful people. All right, everyone stick around. We
will come right back after these messages. For all you non patrons out there,
patrons, you'll have to stick around for much less time. We will
be right back. We're going to take you through La Confidential, and we're
back. We open up in nineteen fifty three Los Angeles, as Sid Hudgens
played by Danny DeVito narrates, should I do this as Dany Vito? Should
we have Duelingdavito's dueling Devirido's yes, okay, so Danny Devido. Sid Hudgens
narrats in voiceover come to Los Angeles. The sun shines bright, the beaches
are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye
can see. Their jobs are plenty, and land is cheap. Every working
man can have his own house, and inside every house a happy, all
American family. You can have all this, and who knows, you could
even be discovered, become a movie star, or at least see one.
Life is good in Los Angeles. It's paradise on Earth. That's what they
tell you anyway, because they're selling an image. They're selling it through movies,
radio, and television. This is also all superimposed over like stock footage
of like average Angelina's but like glamorous in like nineteen fifties, looking like walking
down, walking through parks, and like look, how do you call it?
And beautiful the city is. Sid goes on to tell us that the
La crime kingpin Mickey Cohen, has recently been taken down for tax evasion,
leaving a power vacuum in the underworld, and assures us that it's only a
matter a time before someone with balls of brass tries to fill it. We
finally see him and realize that he's typing a column and he signs it with
off the record on the QT and very hush hush. We zoom out and
we see the cover of Sid's magazine, also called Hush Hush, with his
story about Mickey Cohen and also a story about forgive me for this word,
but it actually is spelled with an I in the headline ingre new dikes in
Hollywood, which had me thinking, what are the ingre new dams that we
have? I mean, it's really the famous one's just Hoover Dam, right,
the Aswan Dam, and then all I got is dental damns. Those
are the three I could come up with. Are any other famous dams?
Damn Yankees? But that's a famous big apple dyke, right, That's what
that was spelled d. I guess because back in the fifties he couldn't get
away with the other spelling, like it would have been yanked off the show.
Maybe that's why I am but holy holy, that's funny. I didn't
catch that. We cut directly to Officer Wendell Budd White played by Russell Crowe,
noted rage monster Russell Crowe. Yeah, is this is this roll of
reach for him? We'll find out. We'll find out. I think this
is my first time seeing him possibly and my first or second time seeing Guy
pierced. We discussed this in the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert episode where
I'm pretty sure I saw this movie first, and then when I saw him
in Priscilla, they literally blew my mind. I was like, A,
You're Australian and b what, Yeah, you're amazing? Well they and they
were. They were not names in the US for this movie. Kevin Spacey
was the name in this film. Yes, I remember the movie star Yeah,
yeah, because he had just won the Oscar for Usual Suspects. Usual
Suspects another great film, but like the most problematic and director like just awful.
And so my big takeaway I was for the first time I saw the
movie was these two guys are gonna be huge stars. And I was not
wrong. Okay, so I have some issues with Bud's character. We will
get into that later, but I have to say I think the performance is
fantastic. It's one of those like an actor taking the most underbaked role in
a movie and being like this and you're like, how'd you make a soufle
well done? That's fair. I have no disagree with that. He's a
blue eyed, stone faced cop staring into a house where he can see a
domestic violence incident through the window right in the backseat of his car since his
partner, Detective Sergeant Dick Stenzland played by Graham Beckel, he's swigging on a
flask and mocking Bud for his obsession with saving battered women when what they should
be doing instead is picking up the rest of the alcohol for the police officer's
precincts Christmas party. I mean, the movie does tell you immediately what it
is, Bud radios for a beat cop to come to the house to arrest
the husband for being a parole violator, because you're not you know, he
shouldn't be hitting his wife. It's against his parole, that's right. And
he's like, you'll see the guy, but we won't be here anymore,
and like and like, his partner lasts in the back seat because his partner
knows exactly what's coming. Yeah, well, the partner just sits in the
back seat and continues to get drunk. Bud yanks the Santa display off the
roof of the house to get the guy to come outside. He beats the
husband up and handcuffs him to the porch and tells him that if he ever
touches his wife again, he'll have him jailed for being a child rapist.
I don't know how, Yeah, I really don't, But okay, I
think the movie is telling us. Yeah, I think the movie is telling
us that cops were able to do this sort of thing. Yeah. We
cut to Detective Sergeant Jack Vincenn's played by Kevin Spacey. We've done a couple
Kevin Spacey movies on the podcast. Very problematic figure. We're not going to
unpack all of that here. We're going to discuss the performance, not the
man, uh, the creep. You mean the absolute fucking creep, absolute
weirdo that this person is the super duper awful creep that is Kevin Spacey.
But you know what good performance. In this movie. Jack is a sleazy
fame whore. He's enjoying himself at a party and he we learned that he's
the technical advisor for the TV series Badge of Honor, which is a job
he delights in. Sid enters at Standy DeVito sid comes in he reports to
Jack he has the scoop on a studio contract player named Matt Reynolds, who
picked up some marijuana and is enjoying himself with another starlet. He calls Pothead's
Grasshoppers here, which I'd never heard before and I thought was very funny.
Okay, there's so many slurs in this movie that I actually was like,
Okay, that's really funny. There's a I have a couple of weeks now
four gay people that I was like, I like them, both slits,
and I think we need to bring them back. Well, one of them
is brought back, but the other one really does need to come back.
Yeah, I think the other one is for bisexuals. Technically, Yeah,
I love it. I love it all right. So Jack and Sid negotiated
deal where Jack gets the arrest and like and Sid gets the scoop. So
Jack gets like held up as this great cop. He continues his job like
that's what he wants. Sid gets money for hush hush. Eventually, Jack
and Sid carry out their plan. They bust Matt Reynolds, played in his
film debut by Simon Baker, another Australian. Do they hijack a plane from
Australia to Los Angeles and force these men to be in the movie. Curtis
Hansen vacationed in Melbourne one summer, and suddenly all we have, all these
Australian movie stars. When going through Matt's possessions, Jack finds a business card
reading Fleur de Lye, whatever you desire all of Sid's like voice over here
when he arrests these two hopheads for smoking that refer it is right out of
refer Madness, which just made me want to rewatch Reefer Madness totally. Have
you ever seen refer Madness? I saw the musical they did of it in
like the two thousands. I own a DVD copy of the original. Like
it is so funny and so good. I'm gonna bring it over one night.
We're gonna have We're gonna have some wine. We're gonna maybe do some
edibles and watch some Reefer Madness. Okay, sounds good, I'm in.
We meet Sergeant Ed Exley, played by shocking Australian guy Pierce. His American
accent is perfect. So Ed is this straight laced young cup who's hoping to
follow in his father's footsteps. He's all suits and Harvard Law degrees and glasses.
Right, he's the boy genius of the of the LAPD. Everyone keeps
telling him to get rid of the glasses, and I'm like, what do
you expect him to They didn't have contacts in the fifties. There's a whole
there's there's like fifty minutes of this film. Yeah, this man does his
full ass job with no glasses on, and it is distracting one percent of
the time. I mean it's a little acknowledged, but like there's scenes where
he's reading at his desk. I would have loved him to be like like
holding the paper right up to his eyes, to be like, wait,
I can't read this report. What does it say? Yeah, he murders
like three people whilst not wearing his glasses, which correct problematic. So his
boss, they're all of their boss is precinct Captain Dudley Smith, played by
James Cromwell with sometimes an Irish accent and sometimes not an Irish accent. Just
get over it, that's correct. Just deal. Huh. It's gonna happen
when it happens. It's gonna happen. It's gonna show up when it fucking
feels like it and then it's gonna go away like the groundhog. So shut
your faces. If the line has Boyo in it, he's Irish. If
it doesn't, he's more American. He's American. It comes in ghosts Ah.
He does the same thing on succession. Did you notice where he sometimes
has an accent on succession? Totally and it's a scott It's like Scottish.
I think they're supposed to be Scottish succession, but they're never neither of them,
like, actually does a Scottish accent. Well. So Dudley is a
smooth operator. Yeah, never gets worried. He's always on top right.
Ed tells Smith that he wants to be a detective, and Smith is like,
ooh, okay, anything but that job, like you would be amazing
and internal affairs and Ed's like no, no, no, I want to
be a detective like my dad was. And then Dudley's like, okay,
but would you be willing to plant evidence or beat up a suspect or shoot
a criminal who might be found innocent in a court of law even though you
know he's guilty right in the back, Yeah, to make sure he doesn't
get away. And Ed's like no, I want to be a detective,
not a criminal. I would like to not break the law in the pursuit
of justice. Is that cool with you? And Dudley's like, no,
actually, no, no, that's not how this works. So we cut
to Bud at the liquor store picking up the bottles and bottles of liquor for
the police precinct Christmas party. Honestly, for the nineteen fifties, it was
not as much booze as I expected. He's waiting for his order and the
door opens and Lynn Bracken played by Kim Basinger enters. She's in a like
a black cloak with a white lining around the hood. The reddest lips you
ever did see an extremely famous shot this introduction of this character. Yeah,
I think the movie wants to posit a little bit of love at first sight
here, which is I find a very silly thing to and a crime thriller,
but short whatever, just go okay, I'll just get into it now.
She's supposed to be like unflappable and chilly to the point where like you
can't tell what she's thinking or whose side she's on, right, that's part
of it. Like, yeah, she supposed to be the them fatal,
right? Is she a villain? Is she not? Right? Is she
the theem fatal or is she the sacrificial angel? Right? She's a little
bit of both in this movie. That's the that's the innovation that they're going
for here. But the problem with that is she just seems so irritated by
him from the jump. He will just straight up start stalking her. That's
his like courtship of this lady. Is he just stalks her? And I'm
like, why is she okay with this? Like, yeah, it is
very poorly written, this romance, And I do end up sort of believing
them because these are both really really good actors who made me believe it by
the end. But the journey to get to their relationship, I was like,
I don't buy any of this. I think where we diverged it didn't
get me at the end. At the end, it remained dumb to me.
Yeah, it's so pretty dumb the whole time. But they're both so
good that I believe them by the ends. This is the part of the
field. These are the two boxes I would like checked. So Bud says
Merry Christmas, and Lynn immediately clocks him as a cop and he's like,
oh my god, is it that obvious? And she's like, well,
you know, kind of. So he leaves and he notices a car parked
outside, and in the backseat of this car the debonair Pierce Moorhouse Patchet played
by David Straight There and the lovely Susan leffert So has a bandaged on her
nose, which to me immediately said rhinoplasty. But well, just remember Bud
is obsessed with saving battered women, right, so he immediately walks up so
the driver will let her learn his name is Leland. Meeks interferes, Bud
tosses Leland on the back of the car, disarms him, and then forces
them to roll down the window. Pierce assures him the amber is fine.
Bud's not convinced, and then from behind him the angel appears. Lynn is
there and she says he's telling the truth. It's not what you think.
And Susan says, I'm fine, mister le me alone and that they just
drive off and Bud lets it go. He is so over the top.
He is cartoonishly violent throughout the film, so like he is the Hulk in
my earlier metaphor. Leland comes out of the car and it's like, can
I help the office, And before you can even finish the word officer,
he is like being thrown on the hood of the car and like roughed up,
and I'm like, ask a question, any question. We do not
know what these people's relationships to each other are. I get it. You're
concerned for her safety, just you know, it could be her father picking
her up from her husband who beat her. You don't know what's going on
here. You don't know what's going on. Maybe she plays softball and she
got hit in the face. Come on, like, I doubt it talking
about Andre new Diykes in Hollywood. So Bud backs off and he goes back
in stens Land. That's his drunken partner. He's kind of looking at the
car and he comments that he knew Leland when he was in the force,
but he doesn't know anyone else. He doesn't know what's going on over there.
Everyone converges in the police station. A group of cops arrived with six
Mexican men under arrest, reportedly for brutally beating two LAPD officers. We find
out that like literally the guys are home with bruises that's it, like they
were fine. There is a slur against Mexicans in the scene that really that
actually made me laugh. Someone calls them taco benders. Let's get those taco
benders, And I was like, is that the burn you think it is?
Like, tacos are delicious, tacos are amazing. The idea that like
that's going to hurt someone's feelings. There are other slurs used in this which
I will not say, which are much harsher the taco bender ones. I
like that in the fifties someone would have been like, ouch, that really
hurts my feelings. So the six Mexican men are arrived at the police station.
They're getting booked. Soon it blows completely out of proportion, and these
very drunk cops are like giving each other tall tales about how colleagues are basically
on their deathbeds and one of them lost an eye because these guys beat the
shit out of them and like attack them in the middle of the night.
Stenzlynd, who is so drunk, leads an angry mob of drunken policemen into
the lock up under Ed's protests. He gets overruled. He gets thrown into
like a prison cell, like a solitary confinement cell by the other cops,
and then the rest of the cops start just beating the shit out of these
six guys. One of the six guys stupidly says fuck your mother to but
Bud is actually trying to de escalate the situation. He runs in to like
get to his partner and he's like, hey, man, stop beating up
these guys. It's not good. It's not a good look for anyone.
And then one of the guys is like, fuck your mother, and he's
like, all right, taco bender, let's go. Jack gets involved in
the brawl too, he ends up punching one of the guys out. Unfortunately,
none of these idiots has noticed that there's still a reporter at the praisinct
who was doing a story was gonna do like this silly little puff piece,
but instead catches this huge story about a bunch of cops beating up a bunch
of suspects. And then you see the headline the next morning and it's Christmas
massacre. So this is a fictionalization of the bloody Christmas scandal that actually happened
in nineteen fifty one. So this is like a little bit of real world
stuff happening. I genuinely think the movie has the movie is on the correct
side of history. The movie makers, they do not think any of the
stuff is good. They do not think any of this stuff is like no,
wait right, But because it was in nineteen ninety seven, still none
of the victims of any of this get any characterization. There's no look at
anyone who isn't white other than just a victim of white people. And it
started to grate on me a lot. Like there's a group of black suspects
later that get a little bit more characterization, but it's still it's just like,
this is a story about police brutality, and we're not going to humanize
anyone that the police are brutalizing. They're just there to be brutalized. I
mean, these guys in particular, we don't know anything about them. The
guys later in the film are so horrible. They're so awful that like the
movie almost excuses the police brutalities exactly because they're they're they're monsters. Yes,
it's a double edged sword. On one end, it's bad. It's a
bad look for the movie because it doesn't particularly age well. Because it kind
of lets the lapd off the hook a little bit. Yeah. I don't
think it fully lets them off the hook, but it lets them off the
hook a little bit. I think it's not trying to let them off the
hook. I think they think they're doing the right thing by like, we're
gonna make these criminals awful. So when you are watching the movie, you
can still root for maybe yeah, maybe yeah, because I guess you're supposed
to root for them by the end, these three, these three guys,
right, or at least you're you're hoping they actually beat the big bad.
I think it's also a way of like not distracting the audience of not being
like, well, now all I can think about is police brutality. It's
nineteen ninety seven. Remember what had just happened in Los Angeles, like with
the LA riots, right, So that would have been on people's minds.
So if the characters didn't have it's like, these guys didn't have like,
and I mean a real reason, not like, oh, they robbed a
store, so let's beat the shit out of them. No, they did
something fucking horrible. It's the only way the audience can move past it.
I think to be like, okay, yeah, but those guys did kind
of deserve to be punished for what they dido, even though they did in
the completely wrong way, you know, and for the wrong reasons, and
they were being demeaned. Racial slurs were being used the whole time, and
like it like it's not good, but it's I think it's slightly letting the
audience off the hook. We cut to the aftermath of this of this police
brutality incident. We meet d A. Ellis Lowe played by the Great Ron
Rifkin, the police chief, and Captain Smith that's James Cromwell. They're interviewing
the officers implicated. Bud refuses to testify he loses his gun in badge.
Ed, on the other hand, is more than happy to testify against his
colleagues and even offers some advice. He says, switch most of the blame
to the officers whose pensions are secured, and then give jail time to Stensland
and Bud because they were the two biggest problems in it, right because at
first Stensen was beating everybody, Bud came in to stop it. Fuck your
mother happened, and then everything really went to shit after that, and the
photograph that this press got was like Bud right in the middle of the brawl.
Yeah. Right, So these are all the cops that are like physically
in the photograph. There's absolutely no way they can deny. Yeah, something
happened. Smith is fine with getting rid of Stensland. He said it's a
terrible cop. He fails all of his physicals, blah blah blah. But
he says, Bud, Bud's a good a good guy. We need Bud
on the force. The chief likes Ed's moxie, promotes him to lieutenant.
On the spot, Ed bargains up to detective lieutenant, and then he gives
the panel the edge. They need to flip Jack as well. He says,
threaten Jack place at badge of honor. That's what he actually cares about.
Demoteum device, tell him until he gets a big hit, he can't
go back up to narcotics. He can't go back to badge of honor.
And if he doesn't testify, he gets nothing. He'll be off Badge of
honor forever. They do it. Jack flips and that's how we get our
testimonies against wouldn't you want to be on vice if you were Jack Vice is
sexy, right right, that's where all that that's where all the sexy crowd.
That's a terrible thing to say. But like in terms of like Hush
Hush magazine, I would you'd want to be on Vice. Maybe he had
to be on I think the implication was he had to be on narcotics to
be the technical advisor on Badge of Honor. I presume maybe Badge of Honor
the guy is a narcotics detective. That actually makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, they never made it clear, but that's that's the implication. Gotcha.
After the trial, Dudley meets with Bud and gives him back his gun
and badge like in a bar, which is exactly how those things should be
done. Yep. He informs him that STENSLNN is done, but I think
you have something that the police force needs, emphasis on the word. He
reassigns Bud to homicide and says you won't be working cases. You don't have
the brains to be a detective. You have something else which is very useful
to us. You do what I say and when I say it, and
you don't ask questions, and I love that about you. Yeah, so
we get a little montage of Bud working for Dudley basically, and we hear
with Sid's voiceover, Sid, remember is Danny DeVito that anyone attempting to rise
up in the ranks of the la underworld and take the place of Mickey Cohen.
Remember Mickey Cohen has been arrested for tax eVision. At the very beginning
of the movie, right Mickey Cohen by the way real person, we see
two assassins like follow around Mickey Cohen's associates and shoot them right so like his
lieutenants are being shot. His head narcotics dealer is shot. Right at that
particular shooting, we see someone in a suit take away the suitcase full of
heroin. We don't see who it is. Meanwhile, Bud is acting as
an enforcer dismis and he is basically anyone who's coming in from out of town
to take Mickey's place is being immediately intercepted by the cops, like crime lords
from like Cincinnati and from Chicago are being immediately intercepted by the cops, taken
to some motel on the outskirts of town. I think it looks like Bakersfield,
That's what I'm getting The impression of and like Bud is basically beating them
within an inch of their life. Well, Dudley's like, go back to
where you came from. We don't want you here. So we cut to
Ed. He's working late in the homicide department as a new detective lieutenant does,
and he's the only person present to respond to a reported murder at the
night Owl coffee shop. He rushes over there. He's thrilled to have his
first big assignment, and he finds the short order cook murdered behind the counter,
plus five bodies all in the bathroom. Dudley arrives. That's the captain
and Ed is like, this is my case, and Dudley's like, I'm
your boss, it's my case, but you can be my second in command.
Fine, And we find out that one of the victims is Dick Stensland,
Bud's old partner. We cut to the morgue. We have a whole
scene of Russell Crowe rushing in and being overwhelmed by the fact that his ex
partner is dead and I'm like, I don't care. Shut up, this
guy sucked. You suck. Stop trying to make me feel anything. Hey,
movies, stop trying to make Paul feel things. It's not welcome.
Oh God. Meanwhile, Bud overhears another body being identified as Susan Lefferts.
That is the woman that was in the back seat with the rhinoplasty that he
saw at the liquor store. Susan's mother is there. She's overcome. She's
saying that she fought with Susan the last time she saw her about her boyfriend,
that her mother didn't like her boyfriend. And she even until she sees
a birthmark on the body's hips, she can't even be sure it's Susan because
she looks so different, right, Susan went from a blonde to a redhead.
She's obviously, as we now know, had that knows job that rhino
PLASTI done recently, so her face is different. We overhear one of the
cops like as or one of the morgantendees rather as they're wheeling her in.
Say, for a second, I thought it was Rita Hayworth. Yea,
so she's supposed to look like Rita Hayworth. I'm gonna be a real bitch
here. Shouldn't look at anything like Rita Hayworth. I was like, why
did they cast this actress to play this role, she literally does not.
I mean, she's a redhead and so was Rita Hayworth, But that,
like, are they hoping by nineteen ninety seven most people will have just forgotten
what Rita Hayworth looks like. Maybe because I'll tell you Kim Besinger is a
pretty decent Veronica Lake that that isn't one to one I can see, but
I don't see it with this girl. So we cut to a debriefing where
Dudley is telling the department about the night Owl case. He goes through the
fact that like a certain car was spotted outside the night Owl around the times
of the killings. He points the finger at three young black men who were
also like on a car of the same description and were seen discharging shotguns in
Griffin Park. He basically puts the entire LAPD on the case. He's like,
find these guys and the car. They all roll into action to find
the suspects. But who heard Susan Leffert's idd at the Morgue heads to the
liquor store where he met Lynn. He fought. He thinks of a shortcut.
He's like, I know a connection to this case. I'm going to
follow that lead. I'm gonna follow my penis all the way to that lead.
He winds up at Pierce Patchett's estate and he wants to know why Susan
had the bandage on her nose the night that he saw them Pierce Patchett David
Strath. Aaron is like, okay, let me play ball with the cops
because I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want any
heat from this murder charge because spoiler, he had almost nothing to do with
it, almost nothing. Pierce tells him that Susan was undergoing plastic surgery to
look like he like Rita Hayworth to fill out his quote unquote little studio well
Erica, let me ask, is her nose similar to Rita Hayworth, because
maybe she had a lot more procedures that she had to get done. Maybe
she don't fall a fucking overhaul to look like I've being so mean to that
poor actress. She's beautiful, but she's beautiful. Hareworth turns out he runs
a prostitution rang, a very very high class escorts that are made to look
like movie stars. So Lynn is his Veronica Lake, which is how I
learned who Veronica Lake was when I first saw this movie, because I hadn't
me. That's how I knew who Veronica Lake was. Pierce tells Bud he'll
reward him if he finds Susan's killer, and he says, hey, I'll
give you whatever you desire, which is the tagline for flu Lee we will
remember. Bud heads to Lynn's next. At one point, Pierce is like,
do you want Lynn's addressing? But It's like no, I got it,
And I'm like, I guess you could have just looked her up.
I mean, I guess he knows her name, so I guess he has
access to the police police database or whatever. We see that poor secretary a
lot in the film, the way they keep working out all over the place,
Like all three of these cops run to like the secretaries at the police
station and they're like, give us like forty years worth of police files and
they don't say please or thank you, and the lady's like fine. So
he meets Lynn again. They start talking about the case. Lynn says that
Pierce takes a cut of their earnings and invests it for them. He doesn't
let them use drugs, and he doesn't abuse them, right, So she's
pretty okay with Pierce. It paints him as like a decent manager. A
decent manager. Yes, she's like, look, my job might be a
little unconventional, but I don't mind it and my boss treats me well.
So what like, honestly, as far as sex work goes, this is
seems like a good deal. This is a really fucking good deal. Yeah,
yeah, agreed. The two spar and ultimately Bud says he'd like to
see Lin again, and when she challenges him if he's asking for an appointment
or a date, he says it was a mistake and he just leaves.
So like the scene, the scene has a really heavy lift, right,
it's trying to it's breaking its back lift. Something a frissant happened between these
two that the audience is going to have to run on fumes from for the
rest of the movie. Nineteen ninety seven. Will posit that it worked because
Dave Kim masuger an Oscar for this and I'm and I am saying it does
not. It doesn't. It is so weird that she's like hot for this
guy. Yes, given performance that Russell Crowe is giving too. Because again,
if it was if it was the Guy Peers character who's slimy but at
least like there's like a sexiness to him, right, or like even the
Kevin Spacey character who's like knows how to sweet talk a lady. Perhaps totally,
but Bud is such an OAF, such a huge oaf and like again
Russell Crowe, very handsome man, nothing against totally, but like he's not
given sex appeal at all. He's not giving like anything that like I can
hang my hat onto to be like, well, that's why she loves him.
And I think you could have done it. I mean this, look,
this would be a very like tropy stereotypical story, but you could do
it where Lynn only knows bad man and he's a good man, which is
a moving target in this movie. But let's go with me for a minute.
Like he's like this like boy scout figure, you know, like he's
he's the cop who wants to come rescue her. Like we don't love that
her boss seems to be fine. It seems to be fine, right fine
with him, and her clients seem to be delightfully adorable for sex for people
who frequent SE's for hers, Like like this is the nicest clientele I've ever
seen one of these, like nice in terms of like they're all very respectful
to her. They all seem to like her, and she seems to like
them, you know, as much as one can when you're in the service
industry. She's not being saved, she doesn't need to be saved, and
that's not actually what's happening. And to the movie's credit, I don't I
don't think that's where they're going on purpose, because that's agreed a little more
progressive right to have this sort of fem fatale who doesn't need to be saved
in fact, is instead saving the cop, which is what I remembered from
the nineteen Like when I saw it, I was like, Oh, if
you'd ask me before yesterday like her arc in the movie, I'd be like,
oh, well, she saves the cop at the end, like she
that's not exactly what happens. That's sort of what happens, but it's not
exactly what happens. But the problem is is that it doesn't. I don't.
There's no like, there's nothing to hang on at the beginning of this
relationship. There's a moment later in the movie when someone he asks her point
blank, why do you like me? And she's like, I don't know
both. I hear you, girl, I hear you that note that that
will come up in the recap that moment. I'm showed your whole ass on
that one, Curtis Hansen. So Jack and Ed managed to track down the
Night Owl suspects, Ray Lewis and Tye using Jack's contacts. They get to
the address and they find another LAPD team there because they they broke from the
direction of Captain Dudley Smith and they went behind his back to get to the
end result faster, essentially using Jack's contacts. By the way, real quick,
I just want to say the scene right before this, when they're shaking
down Jack's like contact, he's a he's a boxer that lives in I'm not
sure what neighborhood it would have been, but like a predominantly African American neighborhood,
right. So he's a black man and like his brother is in prison.
They're basically promising him that they will take ten years off of his brother's
prison sentence if he helps them with this case. So he reluctantly agrees to
help the cops and it's so clear that they're not gonna do shit to help
the brother, and that's that to me, is almost the worst thing anyone
does in the movie, which in a movie where people do fucking terrible things,
I'm like, Okay, that's fucking this guy's genuinely trying to help you.
This scene really is hard to watch, by the way. This is
the scene where like they arrive at this house and Kevin Spacey is walking around
with like a gun as if it's a cup of coffee. Like no one
in the history of cinema has ever seemed less like a cop than Kevin Spacey
in this movie. He just does not have the cop thing go. I
mean he's not trying to again, very good actor, it's part of the
character. Yeah, he's like been out of it for so long. He's
been Hollywood for so long that he forgot how to do that thing where you
hold the gun under one hit. Even I know how to do that now.
Yeah, But he's literally like walking around with like a pistol in his
hand and like no bulletproof vest, waving it around the amount of time the
people in this film go into a situation without backup astounding, Yeah, all
right, So they meet this other team. The other team reports they found
shotguns in the backseat of the car that matches the description of the car found
at the scene. All seems to line up. These three men seem like
the killers. They make the arrests, and we cut to the police station
with the three men isolated in separate cells, and Ed gets to take charge
of the interrogation. He quickly moves to turn the witnesses against each other by
piping parts of these interviews over the intercom into the other cells. The whole
section about who's a sissy who takes it up the ass. There's actually a
fair amount of gay stuff in this movie. None of it really offended me
because a there's actually no really horrible gay slurs used in the movie, like
they I don't know if that's trying to be time accurate or if it's just
simply them trying to not be offensive. That's a very good point. The
thing is, there's slurs across the entire spectrum of humans. Absolutely. Yeah,
nobody gets away like it's a spray and pray situation. There's Italian,
there's Irish, there's Jewish, there's gay, there's women. Seem to do
the best. Actually maybe yeah, it's because there aren't any in there ignored.
I guess they called whoes a lot, but to be fair, they
are actually prostitutes, so you know, it's not the worst thing. I
guess you could be called. I was waiting for like one group to get
spared. No one, absolutely as no one. I think sissy probably was
a really rough term back then, like really rough, like what the F
word is now to us, but it's it just came off as like charming.
Every time Guy Pierce is like I hear you went sissy over it,
juv, And I'm like, oh my god. Yeah, all right.
So Ray, one of the guys, gives up the drug dealer of the
other two and immediately heads to the other cell, where Lewis has wet himself.
He's crying hysterically. This kid, Lewis is completely broken. He stammers
out he only wants to lose his cherry. Maybe she's still alive. Ed
heads into tie cell to keep up this line of interrogation, but he's moving
too slow for Bud. So Hulk Smash, Hulk want questioning to go faster.
Hulk, Well, no, Hulk heard girl in trouble that's what it
is. Like he soon the second he's like, maybe she's still alive,
but like his ears perked up and he was like, what, there's a
woman in trouble somewhere in the city of Los Angeles. I have to save
this woman, like cartoonishly over the top. And I do feel a little
bad for Russell Crow because like, I don't know how you can make this
not stupid. He's hanging on to like the back of a wooden chair,
and he literally snaps the chair in half and tears it apart at the prospect
of there being a woman in Los Angeles somewhere who's been brutalized and needs his
help. And I'm like, okay, okay, down, buddy, Yeah,
this is too You have over peppered the sauce. Yes, he rushes
into the interrogation. He throws out aside. He jams his pistol into Ty's
mouth, starts screaming one of six, one of six, and starts pulling
the trigger playing Russian Roulette, screaming questions at Tye, who breaks down.
He finally takes the pistol out of his mouth and ty tells them the location
of quote unquote the girl I was really impressed with Ed in the scene.
I think he's very good at this, Like this is supposed to be a
little bit of like the machiavellian lizard brained yeah, part of him right,
So and yeah, they demonstrated it well and and he didn't. I mean,
he was lying to the suspects, but he wasn't. Like I just
think that's illegal. Still illegal, yeah to this day, still legal to
do. Yeah. PSA for this episode once again, if a police officer
even asks you the time, scream lawyer in their face and don't say a
word until a fucking lawyer shows up. So the police head to the address
given by Tie. Bud goes in first, because you know, you want
a cool headed cop on the case. You want someone who's going to be
able to read a situation de escalate as much. Absolutely well, yeah,
you want to save the largest number of lives it's possible to save the situation.
Bud goes in, he finds a woman tied to a bed, beaten,
naked. There's a very very like I was impressed by the shot of
Bud's arm just covers her crotch in the shot. Yes, I see a
naked woman on the bed, but like Russell Crowe has to move his arm
at just the right spot so that we don't see her crotch, which I
was like, well done, cinematographer. Her name is I know is Soto.
She was so basically the story is she was this girl who was kidnapped,
raped, and beaten by the three suspects in the police station earlier.
That's why, that's what I was talking about earlier, Like, yes,
they are being falsely imprisoned. Yes, they were falsely accused of a crime
they did not commit. But we did we find out in the interrogation that
they'd actually did commit this heinous, heinous crime against this woman, which is
the movie I think, letting the audience off the hook. And they also
like mention the fact that one of them, I think Ray likes to kill
dogs. Yeah, but like they're like, how many horrible things can we
pile on these falsely accused people to make sure what happens to them is okay?
So Bud sees the woman with her eyes. She gestures towards the living
room. She tells him where to go. He goes into the living room.
He finds a half naked man like sitting on a couch, eating like
cereal and watching cartoons. He just fucking shoots him and then puts a gun
in his hand to make it look like they exchanged gunfire. Right, he
sets up the crime scene. After all this, they're loading Inas into the
back of an ambulance. She's been brutalized. This is I think where the
movie is trying to make the audience like Bud. After killing that guy,
he goes immediately to the bedroom. He uncuffs her, he like unties her.
He covers her up with a blanket. He like kind of pats her
head and is like everything's gonna be okay, and she she grabs his hand.
Right, so, like he is a friend to female victims and everywhere.
Basically it kind of works for me. I'm good enough on this.
I don't still buy that like the kid Basinger love story with him, but
I do buy the movie's assertion that he is, although like ludicrously violent and
hilariously violent, like he's essentially a good person. Like that's there, that's
their assertation, fair enough. So she's being loaded in the back of an
ambulance and immediately like he's such a like lizard brain, he just goes right
to her and he's excuse me, ma'am, what time do those boys leave
last night? Bud shoves him away and he's like, hey, back the
fuck up, leave her alone. It escalates until Ed said that Stensland,
the dead cop, got what he deserved. He deserved to die, and
I'm like, all right, that's a little harshedry. Obviously, it does
not go over well when Bud Bud starts to like try to beat the shit
out of Ed. The entire LAPD basically are called in to hold back Russell
Crowe from beating up Guy Pearce. Over the radio, we hear that ray
Lewis and Tye have escaped police custody. What Yeah, whose job is it
to watch the three murderers? So I have to believe that in the book
this happened, and it was eventually made clear that they were they were allowed
to escape, so they could then just be murdered, just be murdered,
right like it is made clear in the movie. I'm being funny. Do
you think it's made clear? Yes, because we are going to find out
at the end of the film that the two cops that got there before Ed
and Jack right where there did not only plant evidence, but also murder these
guys. But Ed and Jack got there first, and then they couldn't kill
them in front of Ed. And well, I'm sure Jack would have been
fine with it, but they couldn't kill them in front of Ed because Ed
would have been like, you're not supposed to murder. Yeah. So back
at the police station, we hear that Inez gave a statement that would allow
for the three suspects to be at the night at the time of the murders.
Everything is lining up. Ed remembers the interrogation that Ray had given a
name of a drug dealer that they all went to. He's like, give
me the address of that drug dealer. As he's headed out, he says,
I need backup. He takes one cop with him, one cop one
of the guys that helped them with the original arrest, to act these guys,
three known a legend murderers at a drug dealer's apartment. Uh huh,
you are at best outnumbered. You might be out numbered two to one.
Yeah. They head to the address of the drug dealer. They bust in,
blah blah blah. Everyone winds up dead except for Ed. This is
one of those times where he's shooting people not wearing glasses, so crucially Ed
notices he doesn't have his glasses on, right, and he's like, oh
my glasses, And he's like, fuck it, let's keep going. And
he goes into the drug dealer's house, right the murders all ensue. He
murders these guys all without his glasses, including the last guy who he doesn't
even see. The last guy, Tie I think it is, is running
to the elevator and he like basically jams the elevator up with his shotgun so
it doesn't close and just discharges and murders him. He does not know there's
no one else in that elevator, correct, He does not know that,
like he is actually killing anyone, Like he like he's doing this all like
on instinct, and it's all the wrong instincts. It is an interesting choice
of the film to have this character not be a good guy. He has
all the hallmarks of someone who should be a good guy. I have integrity,
I like to I like to solve crimes the old fashioned way with you
know, elbow grease and detective work. I don't I don't resort to violence.
But then when push comes to shove. He's fucking awful at it.
Like he he goes, he goes just as evil as Bud does. Yeah,
just as violent as like any other any other shitty cop. And it's
it's a really interesting take the movie has on it, like there are there
are definitely no good guys. Well it's and it's also we're gonna see like
Ad and Jack are kind of ships passing in the night as far as their
moral arcs. Yes, right, like they kind of go in opposite directions.
So Ed is welcomed back to the station and awarded a medal of Valor.
Right, He's what a hero. Jack heads back to work on badge
of honor. He gets his promotion back to narcotics. He's out of vice,
that boring pornography beat. Bud sits in his car in a downpour,
staring at Lynn's house as she welcomes a client in nothing upsetting to be found
here. She sees him just staring at her from across the street, and
she's like, that's kind of sweet. I'm into that. I'm into being
stalked by a weird cup. Broke the cup, Oh god. Pierce blackmails
a councilman with photos of him and Lynn and gets approval for the Santa Monica
Freeway. I hear that's a big road out there. Another movie about nineteen
fifties Los Angeles where the villain is a freeway magnet who framed Roger Rabbit.
Uh, that was a whole lot of hoo, frame Roger Rabbit. Dudley
continues to make certain that no one rises into Mickey Cohen's place, and then
one night Bud finally heads to Lin's. She lets him into her house and
then into her actual bedroom rather than the Veronica Lake fantasy on the first floor.
And this is when he says, why me, and she whispers,
I don't know. Now. Look, I have to have something to say.
I believe that these outfits, these costumes are period accurate. I'm not
what you're to say. But does he look like a Mormon missionary? No,
he looks like a baby who bigged himself and like ended up in a
man's outfit and doesn't and doesn't know how to fit make it fit him,
so he still looks like a bit. It's like a giant baby, a
giant baby, a baby who found that machine from big and was like,
I want to be a man and that's what happens. It is not good.
It is not none of that is good. I mean maybe maybe if
they had posited that at least one of her clients was just like so hilariously
terrible, which I believe they all are. She was like, you know,
I just really want to get fucked, just by a normal, like
someone who probably knows how, and like, like I would buy that.
That's not that the movie is selling me. And I'm like, just make
me believe this story, please, because I don't understand why she's into him
at all. Of the three cops, who's the best at fucking? Oh?
But Ed or Jack? Oh that's a rough one. You know what.
I think Jack. I feel like Jack's going to be more interested in
like looking at his phone, well you know what I mean, Like,
I know they don't have cell phones then, but I feel like Jack is
just not into it. It's definitely not Ed. See now I disagree.
I think Ed put in the work. I think Ed's read books. I
feel like Ed might be a virgin. Ed Ed understands technique. It might
also be a virgin. I feel like it would matter to to to Jack's
image enough that he'd be known to be able to get a woman off that
he would figure it out. He figured it out. Yeah, Like he's
had a few starlets, and he feels good about himself. So he's like,
I'm gonna be really good. I'm gonna I'm gonna work this beat.
I'm gonna be good at this. I feel like Bud like starts to weep
the minute he comes exactly exactly all right. So Sid approaches Jack with another
deal. He wants to get a story on Da Low. That's Ron Rifkin's
character, who turns out is a Swish. I love it. I love
it. I will be a Swish all day every day. Ah. I
feel like I feel like with Sissy that walk, we have reclaimed the word
sissy, but we need to reclaim the word swish. I think if people
have forgotten it, so they don't. I don't think they know. They
don't realize we have to. But top of top priority, top priority.
Uh, gay's, lesbian, queers and everyone in between. Let's let's let's
get swishback. We need it. Huh. So Jack is more than happy
to go along with that, because Love was part of that panel that cost
him his job at Badge of Honor, A few months ago, and he's
like, fuck that guy. Yeah. Sid has employed Matt Reynolds, the
Simon Baker guy, right, the one they busted for pot at the beginning
of the movie, who is quote unquote Ac Deocy a C d C,
which is apparently bisexual slang. I never heard that one before. Yeah,
I love ac Eczy. I love it. I love it. We got
to bring that one back to reclaim easy. So he's going to bang the
da for one hundred bucks and I love that. Sid then points out to
Jack that's that's twice the money I paid you to ruin his career in the
first place. One hundred bucks, by the way, back in nineteen fifty
three is about twelve hundred dollars, So you know, okay, not bad.
Not bad, well, bad for what's about to happen to him,
but otherwise, right, yeah, not bad for a blowjob. You know.
Jack is now less excited about the whole plot because he's starting to feel
guilty over the way he's fucking ruined this poor guy's life, Matt's life,
because I go shit at Sid's like, hey, Matt, come over here
meet my friend Jack, and Jack's like, please don't bring him over here.
Please don't. Oh, hi, nice to meet you, Like he's
of course, Sid is such an asshole. I do love Sid having fun.
He's having a good time. He's forcing the two of them to chit
chat, right, so Sid steps away. Matt's like, have we met
before? And Jack's like, yeah, yeah, we've met before, you
just don't remember. And Matt still can't place him as the cop who arrested
him, so he's like, oh, is it a Flora de Lee party?
This perks up Jack's ears and he's like, yeah, Flora de Lee,
whatever you desire. Matt's really dumb, so he doesn't realize he's being
pumped for information. He starts pumping him for information and he hears the name
Pierce Patchett and he learns what goes on at his parties from Matt. Right,
so we as an audience already know. But Matt is now telling Jack
like, last prostitution ring women and men presumably who are meant to look like
movie stars. It's kind of interesting they don't have any men available, Like
I want, I wonder, I just wonder why. I'm not trying to
make a thing about it, but but like it seems like why wouldn't he
have male prostitutes also working for him that like there was an audience for it,
I'm sure Hollywood. For goodness, I wonder if that would have been
considered like scandalous in ninety seven, so they didn't go there. Maybe,
But also I think the character of Pierce Patchett wouldn't have had both, Like
the client tele that went to him would not have gone to him if he
had, if he had done both, if he had swishes, if he
had if he had ac douces and swishes, they didn't want a C doucis.
That's my guess is that it would have been historically inaccurate, like like
those were two separate rings, fair enough, Sid returns and Matt's like,
I don't know if I should go through with this. I don't know.
He's like looking at Ron Rifkin, Poor Ron Rifkin. He's like, I
don't know about this. This seems like a bad This seems like it's gonna
be bad for my career. What if it gets out blah blah blah.
And Sid's like, no, no, don't worry about it, no one
will ever know you're doing this. You're gonna help me out with the with
the with the DA and also works on Badge of honor he can get you
apart on the show, and Jack, like very reluctantly, is like,
yeah, I can help you get a part on the show. And Thatt's
like okay, and he heads off yeah, and Jack is like, I
don't I don't like any of this. I hate everything that just happened.
Yep. That night, Jack's conscience gets the better of him. His newly
awakened conscience is saying, this is bad, this is bad. You were
wrong to do that. So he heads to the motel early to warn Matt
of the impending situation, like, you need to get out of here.
He knocks on the door, there's no answer. He walks in, and
he finds Matt dead on the floor with his throat slit. No sign of
the DA right row. Meanwhile, we cut to Ed walking Inez out of
the hospital. Ines is the woman who had been kidnapped and gang raped by
the now dead night Owl suspects. She thanks him for killing the men who
kidnapped and raped her, and she admits she actually doesn't remember the time that
the three men left the night of the night Owl murders. She just knew
that the only way for her to get any justice was to make sure that
society thought they had killed white people and not just raped a Mexican woman.
Apparently, in the book this story, like this character is a much bigger
role and the woman that ed and Bud compeedo is actually her, not Lynn
in the book, which is I don't know what that does. I don't
know that. I like that. Yeah, that the power dynamics seem even
more often they already are. Well, there's no power dynamic issue for me
with Lynn at all. It's not a power thing. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, I think Lynn has almost the upper hand over you. I
know, Bud's a cop, and well she has a functioning brain cell,
so that's a bit. She's specically a criminal, so she does have that
on her. But like it's I never worry that Lynn is going to get
in trouble for being a sex worker. She has way too many friends in
high places for her to even be like thinking about that. Yeah, that's
fair, I would say. I think my concern with Lynn in the movies,
I think the character is so little to the character I kept expecting,
and I knew she had won a supporting actress Oscar. Even with the knowledge
of what the story behind it, I kept expecting the big scene I was
waiting for, like the big scene where something is revealed, where something happens
to her, and and I think in my head, like that could that
could have been a sexual assault scene like that, like in the nineties,
that could have been counted as an incredibly brave thing. I'm not saying it's
good. I'm not saying I wanted it. I'm just saying that, like
I think I was worried about Lynn in the way that you weren't, because
I was waiting for something to happen both to and with her. Yeah,
in the story where it doesn't really I think, yeah, she's set up
to be like mysterious because we're not supposed to know whose side she's on.
I think, yeah, But then they drop that so fast they do,
Yeah, they don't, but they don't drop the mysterious part, like like
give her something to do her, have her gather information for the cops.
She does do something, but it's barely something, but she but it's dumb,
and she like she shouldn't have done it, Like she makes a big,
huge mistake at some point anyway, we'll get to that. We'll get
to that. Okay, speaking of which, at this point, we get
like a little bit of a bud In Linn moment in the movie. They
go on dates, they have sex. He's perfectly happy that all those other
guys just get Veronica Lake, he gets Lynn and Margaret Bracken. Very good
line, I'll admit that's a good line. That's very sweet. They're laying
in bed. They've probably been on like five dates. Maybe they've probably known
each other like two, like not even a week. Actually, if you
really think about the time, not entirely clear on the timeline, because time
definitely does pass. So I was actually thinking about that. It could be
a week. It could also be like two months. I don't know,
Like time passes between when they murder the night Owl suspects and then like the
Metal of Valor happens and Jack goes back on Badge of Honor and like things
do get along. You're right, things do get moving a little bit.
So let's say they've known each other a month. Then I think that's fair.
I think that's fair. Let's say they've known each other a month.
Okay, you know what in that case, I'm a little more okay,
what's about to happen. But what's about to happen is so fucking weird.
Okay, they go in a couple of dates. He is so crapy.
He just stares at her while they're at the movies. She's like laughing at
the screen, and she like throws a little popcorn in his face, like
to be playful, but really to be like, stop staring at me,
fucking weirdo. The first time she has diarrhea, he is gonna completely fall
out of love with her. He has no idea that she's a real person.
Okay, so here's what happens. Now, they're gonna recut to them
laying in bed, postcoital afterglow love. It's in the air. She tells
him she's from a little small town in Arizona called Brisbee, and her dream
is to earn enough money while she's in Los Angeles to then go back home
and open a a dress shop for the girls at Brisbee. That's a little
bit about me, that's my backstory, So tell me a little bit about
you. And then he immediately launches into this story about watching his father beat
his mother to death with a tire iron after tying Bud to the radiator,
and how he was there alone with his dead body, with his mother's dead
body for days until a truant officer finally found them, and Lynn's like,
okay. She's like, I come from a small town. It's very cute
and quaint, and I hope to go back there one day. Hey,
that's an interesting scar on your shoulder. How did you get that my father
beat my mother to death In the time, I'm like, oh my god,
her vagina just shut down. Just no, no, we're not doing
this ever again. You are way too intense. Look, I get it.
That's horrible. That's a terrible traumatic thing that happened to you, and
I'm very very sorry, But pick your moment, dude. He goes on
to say he just wants to be detective and solve the night Night Owl murders.
He's He's like, I'm just not small enough, and I wish I
was smart enough to be a detective. And I wish I was smart enough
to be like like ex Ley. And she's like, you are smart.
You found me, you found Patchet, you figured that out. You're very
very smart, Bud, I mean, standing ovation for remembering where you met
someone and going to a liquor store and demanding the address. Whoa I mean,
did you look her up? Look her up in the in the yellow
Pages? Like who she knows really smart people, I think, right,
Like she knows she's she's involved in, like the upper echelon of like Los
Angeles. Why she's an idiot too? What if she was, like,
Bud, have you gone to Nick at the liquor store and asked him,
Hey, do you have anyone whose name is hey? I murdered those six
people at the night Owl Halient? That would be amazing if she was also
a fucking idiot. And the movie made it very clear she's just like she
has no idea what she's doing. Like these two cannot procreate their their children
would be too stupid, all right? So Bud takes this pep talk and
he heads down to the evidence locker to go over the night Owl case again.
He looks at some photos and realizes that Stensland, his former partner,
was sitting with Susan Lefferts at the diner, but he remembers that Stensland specifically
said he didn't know her when they met at the liquor store in the beginning.
Interesting, dun, dun, dun, what was we made a clue
sound last week? But I can't remember. For Colombo something like that.
He heads to missus Leffert's house. I have to say the actress playing missus
Lefferts, I don't I don't know her name. A plus she is giving
fucking plus. She read the breakdown. It was like an anxiety written older
woman with a with it, with it, with a rapidly fraying grip on
reality, and she was like, got it, got it. Uh.
So while he's there, he manages to get missus Lefferts to id Stensland as
Susan's boyfriend, the one that she had said in the morgue that she didn't
like, And then missus Leffert's to talking about like, oh, the neighbor
told me about this thing that she saw with Susan and her boyfriend and another
man at the house. They got into a fight and they kept going under
the house, and Bud's like looking around and he sees, why is there
a why is there like a wet towel against that door, and he goes
to open it and she goes, oh, don't go in there. I
think a rat died in the wall. And he opens it and it stinks,
and he goes out, and he goes down into the basement under the
house, and he eventually discovers the the decaying corpse of Leland Meeks, which
he who identifies from the guy's wallet stashed in the basement. He leaves and
he takes the wallet with him. Why would Susan be dating Stensland? I
mean, maybe maybe she needed protection or something. I don't know, Like
Stensland, I can't tell you enough is a gross middle aged cop. Yeah,
and Susan was a young, beautiful sort of vaguely looks like Rita Hayworth
adjacent high class sex worker. Here's a little Rita Hayworth in there. What
if you have ed Exley's eyesight and you take off your glasses. She's a
dead ringer for Rita Hayworth. He's not like rich, like you know,
like it's that transactional in that way. So what the fuck? Why is
she with you? Yeah? I don't know because I didn't think about it,
because I think in my head, but you're right, like in my
head, it was some kind of business transactional thing like this, like she
was this is gross. She was his prize for some deed he did in
this in this crime ring or something. But but the movie doesn't actually say
that. I think in my head I was just thinking it. You're right.
They imply that, like she's his girlfriend or something. Yes, she
brought him to her mother's house at some point, like this was a real
relationship, and I'm like, but how fair? Question weird? That is
the true mystery of this film. I would love to see the meet cute
between gross like fifty five year old Distensland and twenty year old Susan Leppards,
where she's like, oh, hello, yeah, you look like you sweat
gin, that's my type. I'm turned on by a light aroma of tequila
leaking through your pores. Don't tell me you're poor. Ooh do you have
anger management issues? To stop it? I'm wet. Stop it. Oh
god, oh my god. Terrible relationship with my father? Why do you
ask Meanwhile, Ed starts to follow the same breadcrumbs as Bud, and he
discovers meets his corpse as well, which implies that Bud found the corpse and
fucking left it under this woman's house. He sure did and didn't fucking do
anything about it, didn't call it in. He then heads over to Jack,
the only other cop for some reason he feels he can sort of trust
and helps and asks for his help entailing Bud and getting to the bottom of
the night hour murders. Jack is skeptical, He's like, why would you
want to reopen this case? It made your whole career, it made you
a fucking lieutenant detective or whatever, like, just leave it alone. And
Ed tells him the story of the man who murdered his father and got away
with it, a man he has named Rollo Tomasi. Excellent name. Yeah,
solid sounds like a delicious Italian meal, doesn't it. Oh, I
had the Rolo Tomasi lit dusting a parmesan on top. I know, I
know veal is not is not is not good right now we're not eating veal,
But trust me, get the veal. It's fucking amazing. So turns
out his father, when he was a cop, just off duty, I
guess, pursued a purse snatcher who end up shooting him dead. Random thing.
The guy was never caught, No one even knows who he is,
So Ed made up the name Rolo TOMASI to give the guy some personality,
like a name to this faithless criminal. He's the reason ed wanted to become
a cop because he wanted to get justice and get the guy who thinks he
can get away with it. He feels like he's lost sight of that.
He's like, I'm like, y think you think you murdered a bunch of
people. You lost sight of that, and you also lost your sight because
you're not wearing your glasses and you're don't have good eyesight. Put him clear
glasses on ed. He asked Jack why he became a cop, and Jack
takes a minute and like admits, Jesus Christ, I don't remember. Like,
yeah, I have no idea why I became a cop. Jack says,
Okay, I tell you what. I'll help you with your case if
you help me with mine. I need to solve the murder of Matt Reynolds.
Quid pro quo, and he's like done deal. Did you notice what
he called it? No, I know everyone's gonna say it's another Hollywood homo
side. Oh I did hear that? I did hear that someone's been watching
Sunset Boulevard? Okay, all right, so Jack, at Ed's request,
tells Bud Bud heads to meet with Johnny Stompanado, the former bodyguard of Mickey
Cohen, who is a real person. Johnny initially refuses to talk, but
Bud gets him literally by the balls, and eventually Johnny coughs up that Meeks
allegedly had a line on a large supply of heroin, and Bud wonders how
a low player like Meeks could possibly have gotten such a supply, and then
he heads to Lynn's just to unwind, just to like bounce some ideas off
of her, see what she's thinking about the case, try to suss out
some more stuff. And Jack and Ed's spy on the two of them there,
right, So now Jack and at are fully spying on Bud. Yeah,
there's a there's a really funny moment here. Bud and Lynn start to
fuck on her couch. In fact, goes, well, maybe he's not
as stupid as we thought he was. So just to be clear, Meeks
is Leland, the cop, the ex cop who works for Patchett at the
from the very beginning of the movie. Yes, the driver was in was
the driver in the car with Susan Lefferts. So that's the guy that people
are saying had a big line of heroin that he was trying to offload.
And he's done. Now the corpse that's under missus Lefferd's house, right,
that that's the story of Leland Meeks. Yeah, well done, Leland served
your point. Nicely done. So Jack and Ed head to Pierce Patchett's which
always makes me happy. I'm like, yeah, more Pierce Patchett. Seriously,
I genuinely my favorite performance in the movie. I wanted more Pierce Patchett
all the time. Not my favorite performance, but but maybe my favorite character.
Yeah. With questions about floor de Lee, which is now connected to
both cases, to both the Linn case and the Matt case, right,
but he stonewalls then doesn't give up any information. They then split up the
two cops. Jack heads to the coroner who has the idea on Meeks his
body, and Ed heads to Linz in the hopes of getting her to confess
that Patchett is setting her up with Bud for some nefarious reason. They're like,
well, obviously, yeah, they're with us. They're like, but
but why is she with you? Why is she fucking him? Yeah?
This idiot definitely doesn't know this is a high class prostitute. He thinks he
just hit the gold mine. They're like, well, obviously this is a
setup, because there's no way a woman like that. Whatever, fuck Bud,
and I'm like, right, I hear you, girl. As they
leave, we see Patchett place a call to Sid to Danny DeVito at Hush
Hush. Ed arrives at Lin's. He's generally an arrogant preck, very big
for his breeches. He demands to know why she's banging Bud, and she
accuses Ed of being scared of Bud because he doesn't play by the same rules
of politics. Says, Ed does, look, I'm scared of Bud too,
but it's because he's a violent rage monster, not because I think he's
gonna outsmart me, not because he's so true to himself that like, he
doesn't play your dirty politics. Then she steps up really close to Ed and
she says, I see Bud because I want to, and he's a good
man. And they kiss and they head right to the bone zone and outside
we see Sid, Hudgens Standy DeVito snapping photos of them. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Jack gets the id he finds out that the corpse under the Leffart's house
was Leland Meeks. He asks to see Meek's arrest records from when he was
on the force, and then we see him arriving at Dudley's house. Dudley
is the captain, Captain Dudley Smith, who's definitely not behind all of this.
He's definitely not the big bat of the movie. He is a police
captain. We must trust that. If we can't trust Irish cops, who
can we trust? I ask you, where can we turn? So he
asks Dudley if he remembers anything from a case about a dozen years prior that
he just discovered when Meeks and Stensland we're trying to take patches down for blackmail.
Smith seems a little confused. He's like, oh, what are you
trying to be a knight in shining armor now? You don't have any practice
at that And Jack says, well, you know, I'm just I'm working
this case with Ed and blah blah blah. And Smith says, well,
what does Ed think about all of it? And Jack admits he hasn't told
him yet, and Smith turns around and he shoots him in the chest what
he was a big bad the whole time. Do you mean to tell me
that the grizzled old police veteran in this movie about police corruption who was introduced
asking a young cop who is willing to plant evidence and shoot a suspect is
the big bad of this movie. So Jack lies there dying, and Dudley
leans down and he asks Jack, do they have any valediction? Boyle?
He's Irish in this moment he gets so irish. This is the most Irish
he gets the whole movie. He basically answers the door, playing a liar
and being like, hey, come into my house, like my jama Eccon's
definitely Jamaican. He basically answers the door in a Leprechaun costume with a pot
of gold. He's reading James Joyce by the fire, drinking a guinness.
Yeah. He's like, no woman, no cry, hey play with my
steel drums. Eh Now, I don't even know what I'm doing? Would
I try to do? It? Was Italian, vaguely Italian. So if
you want me to do a Jamaican accent, ask me to do an Irish
got it? Got it? We're gonna have to draw a diagram. Of
this, eh, Boio, don't di steal my lucky charms. So Dudley
is like, do you have any valediction, boyo? And Jack just chokes
out Rollo Tamasi and dies. Right, So this was a big twist in
ninety seven that unfortunately does it anymore Because Russell Crowe is now the biggest name
in the cast. Guy Pierce is also a legitimate star. He's not as
big as Russell Crowe, but a legitimate movie star. And Kevin Spacey has
fallen out of favor, right, So in ninety seven he was the name
and he dies with like a half an hour left in the movie. Yeah,
a legitimate twist that no longer lands, I don't think so. Smith
addresses the precinct the next day. He reports that Jack's body was found in
Echo Park, but that it was probably killed somewhere else and then dragged to
the park. Don't squhere. He's like, we should have swift justice for
our comrade in arms, Jack, Poor poor Jack who died. He then
pulls ed aside and asks if he's ever heard Jack mention Rolo Tomasi. He's
following up on a lead from one of Jack's associates, I heard this Italian
place downtown does a great Rollo Tomasi your look. A lot of people will
tell you to do a shiatsu massage, but I prefer a Rolo Tomasi frankly,
totally. It's a combination of stretching and stepping on you and then they'll
cover you in Marinara sauce. It's it's so relaxing, and then then they
parm you, they par you. It is just the most relaxing massage of
your life. Kudo's enormous. Kudos to Guy Pierce in this moment, who
fucking nails the moment. I don't know how he does it. It's like
a magic trick of acting. James Cromwell goes, hey, have you heard
of Rolo Tomasi? And then the camera is just just like close up on
Guy Pierce's face and without alerting the other character that he knows everything, all
of a sudden, just because of that word, his eyes widen just like
ever so slightly, and then like he goes, no, one never heard
of Rolo Tomasi. It's yeah, and Dudley's like, well, if you
hear anything, let me know. But Guy Pierce plays the moment so well,
so now Ed is on the tail. He's like, Okay, so
obviously Dudley murdered Jack for some reason, and I have to figure that whole
shit out now. So he starts to retrace Jack's moves from the night before.
Meanwhile, Dudley tells Bud he needs him to interrogate someone who might know
who killed Jack, and they head to the Victory Motel, which is this
off site, abandoned building where they beat people up for information intimidation. That's
where we see them beating people up earlier in the movie, like the criminals
that are coming from out of town. There we find Sid, Sid Hudgens
our old friend Danny DeVito, handcuffed to a chair, and Dudley is questioning
him about Jack and Patchett. Sid eagerly tells them that Patchett is rumored to
enjoy heroin and blackmail clients of his call girls with photos of them. This
whole time, Bud is standing to the side, getting more and more and
more worked up, right like if he was Bruce Banner, he'd be getting
greener and greener and green. Hulk is rising. Hulk is rising, Hulk
is rising. There's one point where he walks over and he punches Danny DeVito
and I'm sorry the sfx on it, the sound effects is so objectively hilarious
because he punches down into like Danny DeVito's stomach, thigh, crotch area,
and it sounds like he hit him in the face with a mace like this,
the most over the top smacking. I'm like, that's not what that
would sound like, like you punched into a soft surface like this is like
what if he just broke Danny DeVito in half, came apart like a Russian
nesting doll, just tore him apart like a wishbone. So Sid goes on.
He says he's got a bunch of photos in his car of some cop
fucking a slut named Lynn, and that's all too much for bud Hulk smash.
He rips the chair out of the baseboards where it's been screwed in.
I can't, like, why is this movie making him a cartoon? I
know, it's like he's a bear in a man's costume, and like the
bear doesn't understand how to modulate his behavior to be a man, and so
strength it's so stupid it is he's about to curb stomp Sid, but Dudley
manages to stop him, and then he runs out to the car. He
being Bud, he thinks the photos are of himself with Lynn. He thinks,
correct, that's he's about to find and he rips open the back of
the car and he finds photos of Lynn banging ed r Row. He drives
away in Dudley calmly murdered Sid, as Sid protests they had a deal me
you and patch it. We had a deal and we cut away. So
Bud, instead of going to ex Ley, first goes to Lin's again.
I don't approve of any of what's happening in this scene, obviously, but
these two actors are fucking nailing it. I have to say. It's now
raining, it's now pouring down rain. He stands outside the house. He
has that wounded animal look of like you hurt me, you hurt me,
And she's doing her best to like, hey, why don't you come inside
the house and talk to me. She looks super guilty. She knows what
she fucked up big time. I know that she was. The movie's gonna
tell us later that she was forced to do this bypatch it in some way,
like she thought somehow she was helping Bud by bringing down Ed. Obviously,
it backfired spectacularly. She had no idea that Bud would ever find out
right. So, but but is like why and she goes, I thought
I was helping you, and he just backhandser like ye again, with his
brutal, superhuman bare strength. He's backhandser and she flies against the wall of
the porch like it's not funny, but it is. It's just stupid.
It's so stupid. Hulk's feelings hurt, Hulk angry. Yeah, no,
I have to say, these two actors are nailing the scene. You're not
wrong, it's it's good performances. For me. What happens to me in
this is I'm like, he is a violent rage monster who is going to
wind up beating her to death because she puts a foot wrong like that,
And I know, like the movie is like, no, he only defends
women. I'm like, until apparently they make him angry. I don't know
that's where I go. I mean, look, none of it's good.
I'm not like that man cares about you, Like, none of this is
good. I think the movie does do a decent job of like saying,
look this is these are extraordinary circumstances and he will sure probably not do this
again. But like, again, this fucking terrible messaging, Like that's really
shitty and terrible messaging. And why does she even like him to begin with?
Ye? So, like, why is she staying with him after he
hits her? None of that makes any sense. I will give the movie
the minuscule credit A. It's a period piece, right, it takes place
in the fifties. Everything was trash. Yeah, I believe. I believe
that the actual name. That's the name of the decade. It's the Trash
decade. It's it's the I liked. I like, everything is trash decade.
So, like, I understand why she stays with him, And the
movie does a decent enough job for me of like making me understand why he
would fly off the handle this badly. Oh sure, Yeah, So we
cut back to the station ed is looking for Meeks's arrest records. He is
interrupted by but arriving and he is in hulk smash mode. He's like,
good, but I'm glad you're here. I need to ask you, and
then before he can even finish, Bud just like knocks him down. He
barely has time to like fight back. He grabs bud gun and like pistol,
whips him with it to get Bud to get off of him. The
two of them get in a brawl around the record room. They basically destroy
the place, and Ed manages to convince Bud to stop hitting him for a
minute and think, who sent you after me? Who killed Jack? Who
orchestrated all of this? Who's trying to get you to kill me right now?
To shut us both up? It's Dudley, and Bud stops punching in
for a moment to be like Hulk calm now, and the two of them
start to compare notes and realize that stens Lynne killed Meeks for the heroine,
and that Dudley framed the three black men for the night Owl murders, and
this is all a giant conspiracy and they have to start working together to solve
this crime or will never get solved. They decide their first stop should be
d A. Ellis Lowe, which was Jack's angle on the case. That's
Ron Rifkin, the Swish, the Swish, the Swish with the ac DC.
Do you think that Basketball stole Swish from us? Nike? We need
to push back. Yeah. Yeah, Lowe is initially unimpressed with their request.
They walk in like two alpha dogs on the yard. They're like,
we eat a tail and bug Smith and Patchet blah blah blah Blah's like,
get the fuck out of my office. So you know what's gonna happen next,
Hulk smash, Hulk give little man swirly Hulk hang little man out of
window until little man give up the goods. This was a little funny actually,
because like the absolute certainty that Ron Rifkin has that he is untouchable in
this scene, I tell until these two fucking rogue cups go so rogue.
It's actually really funny that he runs Ron Rifkin's head. I'm sure it's a
stunt man, not Ron Rifkin into like a wooden balcony that like leaning out
of a three story window. Yeah, he rams that head into the balcony
so hard. I'm like, there's no way that didn't hurt. I don't
know how they did that with a stunt man. It looked like it really
hurt. It's made with like popsicle sticks, yeah, something like that.
Yeah, they're hanging him out the window for somehow low secretary doesn't hear him
screaming bloody murder inside of the office, But I guess we're not gonna worry
about that, weird right, or like they didn't lock the door, We
don't hear her banging on the door, like I'm calling the police. Yeah.
Low admits that Dudley and Patchett set him up because what they wanted to
do was make sure that when they took over as heads of the Criminal Underworld,
the DA would not prosecute them. That's why they wanted to blackmail him.
When they came in, Matt hurt everything and they slit his throat.
Okay, So the sequence of events in this movie is as follows. Mickey
Cohen goes down for tax evasion. Smith and Patchett decide between the two of
them they are going to take his place. They are going to be the
new kingpins of Los Angeles. Yeah, they go about murdering people. Leland
Meeks is on the team that murders Cohen's drugs are he takes the heroine.
Stensland, who's out of a job, decides he wants the heroine, murders
Meeks. He's got the heroin now. Somehow Smith gets winned that Stensland has
the heroin. He sends two cronies to murder him for some reason. They
decide to do it in a public place and they take five innocent bystanders with
him. Yep, right, did I miss anything? I think that's it.
Yeah, No, you're good. That's okay, that's all good.
That's it. And now it's just the rest of the movie is just Dudley
closing up loose ends, right, that's why he kills Sid. Sid knows
too much at this point. So Butt and Ed head to Patch. It's
because they're like, all right, we go to we have to figure out
how to take Dudley down. We're going to go through patch it. Unfortunately,
they find him sitting in his chair with his wrist slit and a fake
suicide note. Whoops, two of his fingers are broken. It's very clear
he's been has been held down. This is not a this is not an
actual suicide. Right. They now realize that Dudley is tying up loose ends
and that puts Lynn in the line of fire. So they call the sheriff
of West Hollywood, who's closer to her house, to like look after her,
and when they get there, they're informed that they've got Lynn at the
West Hollywood police station for her safety under an assumed name. At one point,
the sheriff says someone worked her over, though she looks like she's been
beaten up, and Ed looks to Bud, and Bud just has this guilty
look on his face, like hulk, like a bear who was caught with
his hand in the It's like, it's okay, who hasn't hit a woman
once in a while? Am I right? So they go to the police
station to talk to Lynn. Bud's like, you talk to her? Ed
goes in. There's a moment where the two of them see each other with
their faces all bruised and beat because, like Ed looks like hell because of
his fight with Bud. Right Yeah. They kind of smile at each other
like they're like, Bud, am I right? Rage monster? Don't want
to cross that one. Ed for some reason, feels the need to tell
Linda Bud hates himself for hitting her, to which Lynn is like I deserved
it and like what is happening? Give her some moxie for God's sake?
Yes. Meanwhile, Bud heads to sids Off and discovers that Sid's been killed,
so both Ed and Bud get messages from the other to meet at the
Victory Motel and this At this point, Erica screams at the screen, but
why would you go there? Yeah, if you know what it's used for,
what sink? Come on? Cellphones really would have helped these dudes out
if they could have texted each other and been like, did you just call
me to go to the Victory Hotel? No? Did you know? We're
definitely not doing that right? Cool? Yeah, in and out thumbs up.
Awesome animal style. Great hahha. The two arrived, they quickly realize
they've fallen for the most obvious trap in the book. There's twenty minutes left
in this movie and this recap is too long. So gunfire, two men
against an army, impossible odds, incredibly survive. Oh no, Dudley's here.
Bud is wounded. Ed realizes that Smith is the real life Rollo Tamasi
quote unquote the guy who gets away with it. Ed gets Dudley at gunpoint,
and the silver Tongue captain talks about everything you said earlier, like you
said you were do this, you did this, He promises, Look,
I'm gonna keep promoting you. This is your way up on the head.
You can be you can be my right hand man. And Ed kind of
hesitates, and Dudleys hears sirens coming in the distance. He's like yeah,
and he walks out, and he turns around and says, get your police
badge out so they know you're a policeman. And he turns around waiting for
the cops, and Ed shoots the guy he knows is the criminal in the
back because he thinks he might get off in a court of law. Right,
that's the big tie up of this, right, the very thing that
Dudley said you wouldn't do, he does at the end to bring about Dudley's
demise. Did I miss anything? I alighted a lot of gunfire. There's
so much gunfire. At one point. I really did think the first time
I saw this that Russell Crowe was dead, Like I was shocked. Yeah,
that he survives the movie, because they shoot him in the face at
that point, and I'm like, oh, well, he's obviously dead.
No, No, he's still alive. Hulk, fine, Hulk, heal
quickly. Maybe the reason they shot him in the face is because he hit
Linn in the face and that's like the movies, the movie being like,
well he is his come up ins in a way, I don't know,
I'm reaching. Maybe they shot him in the face because they're like, well,
doesn't have a brain, so he'll be fine, Like there's no other
vital organs around there. We cut to Ed's debriefing. He gives them the
whole unvarnished truth, with the exception of what he knows about Low the Da.
Because Low the Da is one of the people watching the interrogation, he
knows it right, so he glides over the fact that Low is part of
this in a way as well. Low and the police chief realize this is
going to cost the the LAPD trauma for years if this all gets out,
So we need to hatch a plan to avoid embarrassment. So we need to
paint Dudley as a hero who was killed while taking down Mickey Cohen's crime ring,
and Ed as like his second in command who helped him, Like that's
the only way we're going to get out of all of this. Ed,
even though he's in the interrogation room and can't hear them, he's a few
steps ahead of them, and he starts to smile because he realizes what's happening
in the other room. They turn on the mic and they're like, what
are you laughing at? And he's like, you need a hero, don't
you. Yeah. We cut to Ed receiving another medal of valor. He
is racking him up. He is like, thirty one years old, you've
been to have more medals than Simone Biles. By the end of this movie,
he spots Lynn in the back of the ceremony because everyone else is a
cop in gray and blue and she is a beautiful blonde woman in a bright
butter yellow dress in the back, pretty easy to spot. He goes over
to her says, Hi, They kiss on the cheek like they're old friends
and not someone who fucked someone for blackmail purposes. Their relationship is weird.
Should not be this close. I get that the movie pauses they have trauma
ponded, but I don't think that's what happened. Yeah. Fair, So
she like takes his arm and the two of them walk out of the police
headquarters like they're like dogether wherever we go, like old friends. This is
when the audience finds out that Bud survived the shootout. Because you are led
to believe he died there. But now she's like, Bud's okay, he's
in the back of the car. We're gonna head to Brisbee, Arizona,
my hometown, and start fresh. Ed leans into the car window. He
sees Bud, who's very banged up. They shake hands. Lynn tells Ed.
Some men get the world, some get X hookers in a trip to
Arizona. You know, I kind of like that line. I'm not gonna
lie. I uh, it's kind of stupid, but I I'm glad you
liked it. I don't. I'm gonna give it to you. You enjoy
it. It's silly, It's real silly. Yeah, they all laugh,
as though they weren't all just taken through hell. And she kisses Ed on
the cheek and she drives off with Bud. End of La Confidential. So
stick around. We'll be right back after these messages for you non patrons,
and we will take you through our random observations and final rankings, and we're
back Erica. Do you have any final clues that you that you want to
let everyone know about, any little tidbits left on the left on the field.
I have a gross one. There's a moment where we see like a
Pierce Patchett floor de Lee party, and we see all the like Marilyn Monroe
looking one and the the Greta Garbo looking like prostitute. There is a Shirley
Temple. Oh my god, I missed it. Now the actress's face is
turned away from us. She's like sitting on a man's lap as she's he
Oh, presumably it is an eighteen year old, right, right? But
I mean because I think the movie knows it can't get away with showing anything
worse. Sure, so presumably the but like, yeah, there's a Shirley
Temple in that prostitution ring. Oh I got Oh that gives me the heb
gbs even like hearing you say it, I missed it somehow. Oh my
god, what if they did win with like with like character actors. What
if there was like a prostitution ring where you could you could have sex with
someone who looks exactly like Parker Posey Apologiamatti with Beth Grant, that sex with
Beth Grant with with Steve Do you know what, I know a lot of
people who would take you up on that one. Oh yeah, they would
no blink with Christopher Lloyd but he's dressed as Doc Brown with with Marty McFly's
dad from the From the Back to the Glover, but he's dressed like George
McFly. Yeah, whatever what everyone wanted. You could take Margot Martindale to
the bone Zone. Do you think Margot Martindale and and Dowd is one woman
who dresses herself different. You have a Margot Martindale and an All I know
is I want to be in a threesome with Stephen Tobolowski and and that's all
I want right now. That's all you want, That's all you want?
Okay, this is a very random one. The woman who plays Inez Soto,
the rape victim, the Mexican rape victim in the movie. Her name
is Marie sol Padilla Sanchez. And when I saw her, I was like,
she seems familiar. Do I know her from somewhere? Turns out I
don't. She's you know, she's done a couple of things, but she's
nothing I've seen. However, that did lead me to her IMDb page.
And I want to tell you that the sentence I'm about to read to you
does not make sense, but it is copied and pasted from her IMDb bio.
Okay, okay, tell us more in is her mother, Daniella Vali,
a Mexican actress and trapeze artist, and is most likely a daughter to
David Cassidy. The mother is a daughter to David K. I don't know,
I don't know. It's got to be must be the daughter of David
Cassidy, possibly maybe with Daniella Vali. Yeah, the Mexican trapeze artist.
Yeah, that that part is undisputed. The father might be David Cassidy of
the Partridge family. You know what, let's just make it, Cannon,
Let's just make it. Let's just do it. Let's just do allegedly,
I guess legally have to say that legally. My favorite scene in the movie
is another real life thing that the movie sprinkles in a lot of, like
actual crimes, actual Hongsters, actual people. At one point, Exley goes
to shake down Joey Stomponado at some like nightclub and he's sitting there with a
woman who looks exactly like Lana Turner. And remember the plot of the film
we just talked about. He's like shut up to her, and she's like,
get away from our table. How dare you and he's like, hey,
a hooker who's been cut up to look like Lana Turner. Isn't Lana
Turner, She's just the hooker. And then Jack behind her goes, that
is Turner. Those are Martini in his space that if you do not know
that story, google it fascinating. That is ye. Lana Turner, famous
movie star, dated like gangster thug Joey Stomponado. They were together for a
long time and it did not end well, unfortunately for either of them,
because he apparently was violent with her one night and got stabbed in her house
and murdered in her house. The person who eventually was convicted of the crime
was her daughter and not Lana Turner, although it is widely speculated that it
was actually Lana Turner that stabbed him to death, and no one, no
one went to prison. Everyone was basically cool with hit this guy dying.
No one cared about him. No, everyone's like, what are you.
The legal system was like, look, we're not out to prosecute a fourteen
year old girl or a famous movie star. But apparently it would have been
bad for Lana Turner's image if she had been if she'd been the killer,
so they pinned it on the fourteen year old. That's all timey Hollywood for
you. Yeah, the kid'll be fine. Now see here, gum,
what's gonna do. We're gonna pinish online? Okay, truly incredible story.
Oh my god, a prostitution ring where you can have sex with current day
Liza Minelli. O Lord, did you notice in the very beginning it went
for the Christmas party when Bud goes and he breaks up that domestic violence incident,
that they have a Christmas tree and a manora in the window. I
spot wokeism. I didn't notice that. Well, there are there are Jewish
characters in the film. Sid Hutchins is Jewish. He uses a few,
and I believe the da is also like Ron Rifkin's character is supposed to also
be Jewish. Oh yeah, well his last name is low so yeah,
that makes sense right. Yeah. I just have one more, And that's
one of my favorite lines in the film is said by Sid Hutchins. All
of his lines are truly excellent. He calls what he does sinewendo. I
write excellent, that's excellent. My last one is actually a Sid Hudgens line
as well. It is when he's being tied up and questioned Dudley's like,
what can you tell me about Jack Vincenn's and Sid goes, I can tell
you he's on the night train to the Big Audios Excellent, excellent, excellent.
Really enjoyed it. We kind of ragged on the movie a lot,
but I really liked this movie, Like, I had a really good time
watching it. I like hard boiled detective stories. Yeah, Russell Crow and
Kimbasinger ofvit all really was like I was like, huh, but I was
less annoyed with it than you were, and I was just more like,
but why, like just cut these two out of the movie, almost like
fair enough? Or give her something to do for God's sake. I think
that was the big takeaway for like, on second watching, I really enjoyed
everything, except really that I had the world wrong going in the first time.
Now that I know the world, the only thing that sticks out really
is those two. Yeah all right, Erica, How how shall we rank
La Confidential? One to ten? Perfectly executed Irish accents. I'm into my
kitchen, mon, come on in my house, Come on in my house.
One to ten Hulk smash, Yeah, polk angry Hulk tear wooden chair
Apart with Hulk Bear, he murders more chairs than people in this movie,
and he murders a lot of people. To be fair, he murders a
lot of people. But we didn't even talk about the chair that gets thrown
out the window at one point. That's right, what I presume is a
multi level building, which means some pedestrian down there got got smashed with a
fucking chair. One to ten sinew windows. Mmm, it's a night trained
to the Bigadio. Sinuindo is fun. I'm actually surprised sinuendo isn't like I
don't know, like a like a like a super villain name and a comic
one to ten swishes and ac deuces and and sissies and grasshoppers and grasshoppers and
taco benders. Those are just as the slur as we can say. There
are worse ones. Yeah, I have to say though, and again it
might be period appropriateness, but like, they don't use any of the big
ones that we would flag today. They really don't. They don't use the
N word, they don't use the the F word that we don't say on
the show. They don't think that I think there's a there's one for hispan
X that pops up that I would say is the is the most current.
Yes, agreed, agreed. And even there's a moment where someone calls Linna
whore and Patch it's like, well, that's a little harsh, don't you
think, Like in the movie he's like, all right, calm down,
Like yeah, yeah, it's interesting, Like I don't know, maybe they
were just going for period accuracy, but it is interesting the way that it
it softens the movie. Like if they were calling, if there were N
bombs and F bombs and like just everywhere, I think these characters would just
be even more difficult to like than they already are. You would bring it
would bring too much real world into it. Yeah, I have to think
that was somewhat intentional. Yeah, maybe I'm over I'm overthinking it, but
to me that seems intentional. I agree. Do you want to go first
on this one? Or should I go first on this one? Why don't
you go first? Since I think I gonna be nicer to the movie than
you are. Okay, fair enough? The movie to me is fine,
It is fine. I don't think it's a particularly good mystery, and I
think the way it engages with its story of police corruption comes off today as
pretty surface and shallow, and I can't say how it came off in nineteen
ninety seven. I was there, but I don't really remember it. I've
drank a lot since then, so I don't really have a memory of that
time. You've been a grasshopper since then, Yeah, exactly, You've been
in the drunk tank. Every chance I get, I wind up in the
drunk tank. As far as its portrayal of gay people goes, I'm actually
fine with all the gay portrayals in the movie, Like the fact that they
actually have Jack who winds up being the person who goes from corrupt to more
moral in the movie and then gets killed for it, which is a pretty
dark story. But the fact they have him just simply feeling bad about like
screwing this actor in this way, Like it doesn't even seem like Jack and
Sid when they're talking about like this this gay hookup, they're not disgusted by
it being gay. Sid just wants like the better story. Yeah, they're
men of the world, they understand. Yeah, they're not like disgusted by
it at all. It's just like this is the way it is, you
know, so the gay star ends of the movie are kind of depressing if
you think about them in the real world, But the movie has enough of
a remove from the real world that that doesn't really echo too much to me.
When I watched it, I was like, whatever, this is low
level stuff compared to everything else that's going on. The stuff with the people
of color is more difficult. The only those that's true there is the boxer
who helps who's Jack's contact, Yeah, right, that, and he is
portrayed as like a person just in La trying to make his way in the
world. But the other three black people who are the victims of the cover
up are also portrayed as truly heinous human beings in their own right, and
that's very difficult. And then the Mexican men that are brought in the beginning
are not really given much character. They're they're they're props to for the police
to brutalize. Uh that that sticks in my craw a little bit. But
I do understand what your point when you say, like, they have to
make those those three black men horrible people to let the police off the hook
enough that you can wind up rooting for Ed and but at the end,
like there's this like math that you have to do and and those characters are
the victims of that. I think the biggest problem in the movie is it's
female characters, because there is only one. Lynn is the only female character
of any note. Maybe Missus Lefferts gets to have some fun and I Nez,
but but I Nez isn't really Andz has three lines and and and that's
it. And and the actress does a good job, but like she gets
to say, like the quiet part out loud, I guess of the movie.
But Lynn is the only one of real of any depth at all,
I would say. And I don't think that depth is super deep. I
think it's like a three foot part. It's the shallow end of the pool,
not the deep end of the pool. It's a coy pond. It's
a coy pond, if you will. We're dealing with a coy pond here.
Yeah. And I think part of my issue that I wasn't able to
kind of like let go of the butt and lind stuff as much as you
were, is that I kept expecting there to be more. And I think
there were opportunities for there to be more, and and I get you your
point that, like they're playing with the trope if you really understand that kind
of movie, which I really admit I don't like. I haven't watched a
lot of them, so I don't know all of those tropes Like that conversation
doesn't come through to me. So you just wind up with a really shallow
character who for some reason likes this idiot and that's all she wrote. Well,
the crazy thing is is they're playing with two tropes there. There's these
movies always have like a femme fatale and then the angel, and so what
they've done is they've combined both of those in Linn, and yet somehow made
her less interesting even though she is both. She should have been twice as
interesting he was in the film, as opposed to that should not have negated
anything about her. Yeah, yeah, so, uh, I don't know.
I didn't. I didn't hate the movie. I think think if you
take out the button Lind stuff, which I didn't like, I think I
would honestly give it like an eighty percent. It's a fun police thriller.
It's the button Lind stuff. Everything but the button Lint stuff. I really,
I really have no issue with you were right when you said that earlier,
Like, that's the that's the Achilles Heel of the movie for me.
And it's also a period piece, so it's set in the fifties, so
that takes a lot of like some of the stuff we would normally criticize,
it goes away because of the reality of the time period it set in.
I'll give it a six. I'll give it a six out of ten swishes
in acdc's I think if you want to watch it, don't go in thinking
it is a Oscar winning, stunning masterpiece like a Good Fellas. I think
it's a fun It's a collateral movie. It's a collateral. It's exactly it
is a collateral. What do you think. I liked it way more than
you did. I actually think it's way better than Collateral. Collateral was dumb
on many levels. This one is like it only dumb on one. It
really only falls down on one. I think that as a crime story,
as a murder mystery, I think you're right, there's really no mystery to
it. I'd forgotten that when we chose it, and I was like,
oh, yeah, there's no mystery in this movie. I wish we'd pick
something that was actually a mystery. Next week we have a real mystery,
actual murder mystery, because this is not a mystery, this is a crime
thriller. I don't remember if I was like even remotely surprised when we when
Dudley shoots Jack. I will say they did do that beat well, because
even though I knew the whole time, I was a little shocked when he
actually shot him. Yeah, so they built it well. It also happened
so fast. Yeah. I like it as a movie. I think the
dialogue is great. I think the actors are all uniformly wonderful, even Uni
King Basinger, who maybe did not deserve an Oscar for this, but is
doing her fucking level best to make this shit work. I don't think it's
skirts past the stuff that you think it's skirts by. I think it actually
confronts it pretty head on. The cops immediately. Always, and this is
a trope in absolutely every movie that minorities always get like blamed for every crime
that happens in these major cities, right in these in these cases. And
so I think the movie hits that, and really hits that in a way,
that way, way way more movies just blow past it, and then
the audience is left to be like, well, we know that's bad,
but they don't follow through. They don't show us like the murder of of
young men in service of like this, this grander police scheme. It does
let you slightly off the hook because these guys are fucking terrible too, But
I'm not sorry about that, frankly, because it would have it would have
it makes the movie. It would have made the movie so hard to watch
and so dark. I mean, it's already so dark and nihilistic, Like,
I don't know if it needs more nihilism on top of it all.
I think it treats gay characters remarkably well. Given for nineteen ninety seven,
it could have been really really bad, and Matt and even Low are given
like a tremendous amount of like empathy I think from the film. Yeah,
most movies, even in nineteen ninety seven, and something written in nineteen ninety
that takes place in nineteen fifty three would not have afforded them. That's fair.
I think there is more thoughtfulness behind the film than like your average crime
thriller. You're right, women, nobueno in this film, they're all victimous.
They are all survivors in some way of some kind of horrible violence done
to them by men. I would say, even even Susan Leffert's mother.
Yet, like it's it's all bad. It's not good. They're like the
they're the the damsels in distress in service of this very male dominated plot.
So that's not great. So I'm you. We gave it a six.
I gave it a six. I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna give it
a seven. Okay, seven out of ten ACD season swishes. But I
do have a palate cleanser. I suspect it's the same one you have.
I know I have a very random one. Oh mine isn't random. Mine
is the new Perry Mason Show on HBO. They've only been two seasons.
I think I got canceled sadly. Yeah, but it takes place in the
exact same era, in the exact same milieu, like the exact same type
of genre. You got your you got your your ac Deucey's, you got
your swishes, you got your people of color. It's fantastic, and it's
it does so much course correcting for everything that came before it. It's really
good. Highly recommend if you haven't seen it. If you like something kind
of hard boiled and dark but stylish and sleek at the same time and with
a heart of gold in the middle, definitely watch the New Perry Mason on
HBO. I agree. I will say I would say I liked the second
season of that show way more than the first season. I thought it took
a big step up in the second I like the first season, but I
love the second season. Agreed, But you do have to watch the first
season understand what happens in the second season. And again, it's not bad.
It's just like, if you're like, this is a little slow,
I don't know about it. If you stick with it the second season to
really grip you yea. I have a really random one. I watched this
movie once in the early aughts, and I remember it being very good.
I've done some research on it. It seems like it's held up as a
good movie. There is a movie called The Some of Us. It is
a nineteen ninety four Australian movie in which Russell Crowe plays a gay guy who
lives with his widowed father. Oh yeah, it's a whole thing about like
how his father's like almost overly supportive of him being gay, and like they're
both dating, and it's this whole thing that all sounds delightful and very fun
to watch, which it is. But I'm just warning everyone there is a
twist in this movie where the father undergoes like a medical emergency and everything becomes
much darker. So I like the movie. It's very well. I remember
liking the movie. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I
think it ages pretty well. I'm guessing ages pretty well. Maybe we'll do
it someday. Who knows, Maybe we'll run out of enough movies that we
wind up on some little Australian Indie from nineteen ninety four, the Some of
Us with Russell Krowe, or the other Australian India that we've covered with Guy
Pearce, Priscilla Queen of the Desert. All right, So that is the
end of our show. You can follow us on Instagram, on Twitter,
on threads. We have a tea public shop where you can pick up podcast
swag. If you are a Spotify user, we'll ask some questions. We'll
do polls about episodes. You can answer those. We would love it if
you would leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or any podcasting platform that
you prefer. If you do that, just like Ain's lovey from the top
of this episode, you let us know you did it and we send you
a that age Well tope bag. That's the deal here at that age Well.
See, we didn't do enough hard boiled like we didn't. Ah,
we didn't. We need to write a whole script. That aged Well is
produced and edited by that swish over there, Paul Kaola to see that podcast,
Paul, to see that podcast. My job. We would like to
thank Brian and Mary for reaching out and letting us know what they want to
hear. If you want to have a say in the topics we discussed,
you can join our patreon. Every patron gets to vote in an exclusive monthly
poll to determine one of our subjects. So head on over to patreon dot
com slash that age Well podcast to find out more. Speaking of which,
Erica some tears on our Patreon come with thanks for a podcast character. And
today we're hearing from a man I only wish could have lent his velvet tone
to La confidential. Mister Keanu Reeves, Hi, this is Keanu coming to
you from the City of Angels. That's right, Los Angeles, where good
is bad and bad is good and left is right and sometimes people win Academy
Awards for doing basically nothing in a movie. Is that the crime of the
century. Maybe? Actually, no, that would be Crash winning the Academy
Award for Best Picture. What a fucking turd. The other crime was being
overlooked my amazing performances as William Preston Esquire in The Bill and Ted Trilogie.
But I digress. I'm here to thank Doug for listening to that aged Well.
Thank you, Doug. You know what crime you have not committed,
The crime of omission, the crime of not listening to that aged well via
Condias Doug. Wow. When I think of Keanu Reeves Oscar winning roles,
I think his supporting turn in Dangerous Liaisons where he was really robbed but he
doesn't feel that way. I feel it's the John Wick franchise myself. Fair
enough, fair enough, all right, Erica? Any final thoughts on La
Confidential La confidential Paul In the City of Angels, no one is above the
law, and no one gets away without being called or racial or ethnic slur,
your big dumb Italian, your big swish buzz meets and Dick's Stensland are
the dark timelines Hitchcock and Scully from Brooklyn ninety nine. Oh that's canon,
I will hear. None of it feats for Brooklyn nine nine Hitchcock and Scully,
but they've broken bad. It is yea, it is Meeks and Stinsless.
That's chilling. Actually, I don't care for that. I don't care
for that at all.