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Reviews Counted:179
Fresh:61
Rotten:118
Average Rating:4.9/10
Consensus: Though this ambitious noir crime-drama captures the atmosphere of its era, it suffers from subpar performances, a convoluted story, and the inevitable comparisons to other, more successful films of its genre.
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Genre: Dramas
US Box Office: $22,518,325
Synopsis: Based on the novel by James Ellroy, Brian De Palma's THE BLACK DAHLIA stars Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart as a pair of LAPD detectives assigned to the most notorious murder in Hollywood history.... [More]
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart
Director: Brian De Palma
Despite genius-level contributions from cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and art director Dante Ferretti, the handsome film is almost abusively murky, trafficking in difficult-to-follow plot manipulations, arbitrary twists and mumbled dialogue.
Top CriticIn The Black Dahlia, narrative strands tangle and wither, and minor characters clutter the plot.
Top CriticWhat it accomplishes with its stunning cinematography and set design is undercut by a lack of coherence.
Top CriticA ludicrous mishmash undermined by ghastly performances and a hopelessly convoluted screenplay.
Black Dahlia wilts from a surfeit of incident and a shortage of credibility, owing to a script by Josh Friedman that eventually turns to soap and performances that approach the hilarity of a Guy Maddin melodrama.
Despite some weaknesses, The Black Dahlia remains curiously fascinating.
The Black Dahlia looks so terrific and is filled with so many imaginatively showy sequences and masterful directorial touches that you almost don't notice that, in every other way, it's just not a very good movie.
With the exception of Aaron Eckhart, De Palma's actors can't live up to the period or the atmosphere.
If few people break out laughing, it's because the fun is sordid, and because connecting the plot dots can induce a stupor.
De Palma throws everything at the screen, but almost nothing sticks.
It's not the most captivating James Ellroy adaptation ever made, but it's worth a look.
Josh Friedman's screenplay doesn't so much distill the flavor of James Ellroy's hard-boiled writing as serve up indigestible chunks of verbiage.
The Dahlia stars have the cigarettes and the cocktails and the lingo, but watching them here is like watching kids rehearse a drama in their parents' clothes.
The Black Dahlia is a NASCAR race all but ended by a spectacular wreck on the next-to-last lap.
The Black Dahlia has sparks of brilliance, swaths of dark intensity, unpredictable crackles of wit, some solid acting. But it's chiefly flat and ambling and dull, insufficient in musculature and overripe with melodrama.
A wrongheaded collaboration between two opposites that has too little of James Ellroy's mad passion and too much of Brian De Palma's irresponsible style.
Brian De Palma drains the life out of James Ellroy's take on the spectacularly cruel 1947 murder of a young Los Angeles woman known as the Black Dahlia.
Top CriticVisually dazzling but ultimately disappointing.
The convoluted plot would be exhausting even if it were believable. It isn't.
Brian De Palma spent three years struggling to get The Black Dahlia made, which helps explain why the movie has the feel of something that was left in the oven too long: It's both overcooked and undernourishing.
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