| The Black Dahlia (Widescreen Edition) |  | Director: Brian De Palma
Actors: Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, John Kavanagh
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.99
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Rating:  238 reviews
Sales Rank: 23,904
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language), German (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 121 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 025192918025
UPC: 025192918025
EAN: 0025192918025
ASIN: B000K2UVZM
Theatrical Release Date: September 15, 2006
Release Date: December 26, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Two police officers find their lives changed when asked to investigate the gruesome murder of a struggling actress.
Amazon.com
The Black Dahlia drips with film noir atmospherics as it unspools a lurid and complicated story taken from James Ellroy's true-crime-inspired novel of the same name. Two boxers-turned-cops--Lee "Mr. Fire" Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart, Thank You For Smoking) and Bucky "Mr. Ice" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett, Black Hawk Down)--are morally tested as they pursue the killer of a young would-be actress, grappling with corruption, narcissism, stag films, and family madness along the way. L.A. Confidential turned Ellroy's heated prose into a taut, compelling movie, but The Black Dahlia collapses like a soggy meringue. Director Brian De Palma (who once made such vibrant, entertaining movies as Carrie and The Untouchables) can't muster the energy to craft one of his trademark bravura action sequences and seems outright bored by the more mundane tasks of shaping performances and establishing mood. The actors flounder; Eckhart seems to be emoting for two, perhaps to compensate for Hartnett's bland lack of affect; even actresses as dependable as Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation) and Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry) give clumsy, unconvincing performances. The one exception is an unsettling performance by Mia Kirshner (Exotica) as the doomed actress, seen only in perverse screen tests and stag films. The story is incomprehensible (and when you can follow it, it's silly); the dialogue is atrocious; the characters make hardly any sense from scene to scene. The movie is, however, good for many moments of absurd camp, such as when Bucky enters the most lavish, palatial lesbian bar you'll ever see, featuring a Busby-Berkeley-style stairway of smooching babes and a crooning k.d. lang. --Bret Fetzer
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 238
 This is not Television August 4, 2007
Noir Fan "Rich"
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Television has ruined the ablility of movie fans to stay focused. So many of us are attuned to 8 minute bytes. This film is an excellent "noir" but it requires the patience of a literate adult! Yes, there is a lot of dialogue; but it all has a reason. The production values are excellent. The acting is top notch; just look into Josh H.'s face for the unspoken dialogue - he's excellent. This is NOT for the 15 to 25 year old crowd. It's for us grownups. Thank God someone is still makeing movies for us. Calm down - watch "The Big Sleep" first, and you'll see the tradition from which this one comes. Hitchcock once said about a negative comment concerning one of his films: "It's only a movie!" I suggest you'll enjoy it more if you keep that in mind. Don't mind the children; watch this one!
Yes I know it isn't very much like the book .. October 12, 2009
Dick Pearson (Newark, UK)
.. but it is, nevertheless, a well though out and scripted film which conveys much of the feel of the book and the seediness that was apparently (I wasn't there so I can't really know) a feature of LA in the 50s.
"Outstanding" March 16, 2010
Terry Richard (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada)
"The Black Dahlia" deals with the murder of a beautiful Hollywood starlet at a time when Tinsel Town was an innocent and thriving community. The movie was based on the actual death of Elizabeth Short. This murder is investigated by two hunky police detectives, played by studs Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart, who find their lives twisted and turned upside down as they try to find answers as to why anyone would want to kill a beautiful woman. Both will also not be satisfied until they find the culprit. Both Hilary Swank and Scarlett Johansson give outstanding supporting performances. There are over 40 minutes of bonus features that deal with the actual death of the Black Dahlia. Brian DePalma, the film's director, is interviewed. Unfortunately, the movie was both a critical and commercial failure
Loved It January 11, 2008
Simonea Q. Paddy (Phila, PA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is one of my favorite movies. I ordered it as a result of seeing the previews but had no expectations it is truely a movie you can watch over and over again.
The woman who laughs February 3, 2007
Jean-Francois Virey (59500 DOUAI France)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
In the late 1970s, I began to go to the movies. I saw Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings", and it made me want to be a hobbit ; I saw "Escape from New York", and it made me want to be Snake Plissken. But when I saw "Dressed to Kill", at 14, it made me want to be Brian De Palma. To the despair of my parents, I no longer had any ambitions of becoming a great scientist : I was set on directing. De Palma had made me fall in love with the movies as an artform.
Almost thirty years later, I can proudly say I have been faithful to the man who ignited this passion, though I am not sure his films have made me a better man. I have seen virtually all of his works on the big screen, including earlier ones like "Carrie" and "Phantom of the Paradise". His 1984 film "Body Double" was a life-changing experience, and I was to see it a total of twelve times, although I am not too happy with the influence it has had on me. My only infidelities to the master were walking out of the theater the second time I saw "Scarface" (but I now realize I walked out on Oliver Stone, not on him)... and missing the theatrical release of "The Black Dahlia" because of house robbers and Guillermo del Toro.
"The Black Dahlia" is a story David Lynch (that other favorite of mine) had long wanted to direct. But of course, in the hands of De Palma, you could not expect the same kind of treatment. In fact, Lynch has probably already made his Black Dahlia, calling it "Twin Peaks". So you could almost make a comparison.
De Palma has of course chosen the operatic, glamourous, film-noir approach, in what seems to be a recapitulation of his whole career, from the unexpected reappearance of "Phantom of the Paradise"'s William Finley (in a role reminiscent of "Blow Out"'s killer), to the cameo by "Body Double"'s Gregg Henry, the homage to Dario Argento (who had also inspired a scene in "The Mark of Cain"), the penultimate shock scene (as in "Carrie" and "Dressed to Kill"), the street violence a la "Scarface", the psychotic killer reminiscent of his early carrier, the wonderful reconstruction of a bygone era (a la "The Untouchables"), etc. "The Black Dahlia" seems to connect all of De Palma's movies into a coherent whole, a single consistent universe.
As a De Palma lover, I was particularly proud to see that much of what I liked most about the film came from him. The discovery of the body is a piece of genius, perhaps the most affecting scene of the film, which connects to similar statements in "Scarface" or "Blow Out" that tragedy often strikes in the background, on the sides, where no one watches or hears. One of De Palma's main themes has always been powerlessness, usually the powerlessness of a male to save a female victim. Never perhaps has he been as effective as here. Also brilliant is the way he chooses to show the body, or not to show it, almost like Ridley Scott with his Alien.
My only regrets about the film are first that the victim (Elizabeth Short)'s psychology is a little too naive and romantic. Lynch did a better job in "Twin Peaks" (and his daughter in "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer") showing a victim who was drawn to evil, who was a fallen human just like you and me with a penchant for the dark side, and who descended headlong into vice and corruption. De Palma and his screenwriter on the contrary turn Short into an innocent victim of the system, a pure little girl who is abused an destroyed by an evil world, which does not seem to cohere with her promiscuity (though of course, the fact that Ellroy has projected his own mother onto the victim explains why she has become such a spotless figure.)
Second, I think the stag films looked fake. In "Forgotten Silver", Peter Jackson did a much better job recreating the look and feel of movies of an earlier era, and he certainly had less money and talent in those days than De Palma now has. I wish De Palma had achieved that feeling of suddenly peeling off the beautifying hollywood layer which he had created with Gary Sinise at the end of "Snake Eyes".
Third, but this has little to do with the director's art per se, I just wish he had chosen better suited and more attractive actresses. Mia Kirshner (one of 24's sexy terrorists) is really pretty, and though she must have been confused by her character's inconsistent and unconvincing psychology, she does a good job being the kind of Vivian Leigh of the gutter she is asked to be. But Scarlett Johansson, at 22, is too young for the role (this is not "Bugsy Malone"), and seems to be overdoing it with her retro-posturing. A more mature and naturally glamourous actress (think Charlize Theron) would have given more depth and authenticity to the character. As for Hilary Swank, to be tactful, she is not exactly my idea of a femme fatale.
One last problem I have with the film has to do with De Palma's comments on the real-life murder. He seems to be baffled by what the murderer did to his or her victim, by how he could have turned such a beautiful girl into such a macabre "sculpture", as he calls it himself. But consider De Palma's career. He has crucified and pierced Piper Laurie with dozens of knives ; slit his wife Nancy Allen's throat twice ; lacerated Angie Dickinson with a razor ; eviscerated Deborah Shelton with a power drill ; and one of his current projects is about a madman who savagely lobotomizes women. Now he is pretending that he has not a clue what the murder was about ?
My own take on it is that the murderer was a Brian De Palma without a camera and a make up crew, someone who did it for real. And in fact, this is about the kind of answer you will get in the film itself. "The Black Dahlia" definitely shows an uneasiness about the film-making business and its impact on people, perhaps revealing the second thoughts he is having about his recurring choices of subject and the effect his films may have had on their audience (think of the cult status "Scarface" has achieved among the gangsta rap crowd.) As someone who has been scarred for life by the violence of his films, I can perfectly understand how he must feel, though I wish he had been more open about it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 238
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