As corruption grows in 1950s LA, three policemen - the straight-laced, the brutal, and the sleazy - investigate a series of murders with their own brand of justice.
1950's Los Angeles is the seedy backdrop for this intricate noir-ish tale of police corruption and Hollywood sleaze. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each in their own style: Ed Exley, the golden boy of the police force, willing to do almost anything to get ahead, except sell out; Bud White, ready to break the rules to seek justice, but barely able to keep his raging violence under control; and Jack Vincennes, always looking for celebrity and a quick buck until his conscience drives him to join Exley and White down the one-way path to find the truth behind the dark world of L.A. crime.
Written by Greg Bole <bole@life.bio.sunysb.edu>
Many of the events in the movie were based upon real events. These include the Bloody Christmas scene where drunken police officers brutally beat up Hispanic prisoners suspected of beating up two uniformed cops; the plot line of real-life gangster Mickey Cohen's arrest touching off a gang war for control of the rackets; the LAPD Goon Squad which would kidnap out-of-town gangsters, beat them up and threaten to kill them if they ever tried to come back to set up their operations; Lana Turner dating gangster Johnny Stompanato (although this movie is set in 1953, and the real Turner and Stompanato didn't start dating until 1957). In real life, Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed Stompanato to death on April 4, 1958, after catching him beating her mother.
See more »
Goofs
Anachronisms:
In the Nite Owl café murder scene, as the camera pans over the café, the mustard and cat-sup are seen to be in plastic containers. In the 1950s, mustard and cat-sup always came in glass bottles.
See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Sid Hudgens:
[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. There are jobs aplenty, 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." Ha ha ha ha. That's what they tell you, anyway. See more »
Crazy Credits
Characters from the movie were incorporated into period stock footage
shown during the credits
See more »