Black Dahlia, The

Rating: ***/*****, or 6/10

Intriguing and stylistically successful but ultimately haphazard and chaotic movie concerning the 'Black Dahlia' murder mystery of 1947, involving the investigation by two cops of a brutally slain and grotesquely mutilated young woman, based on the novel by James Ellroy. Brian De Palma, no stranger to the genre and the time period, is fully capable of making the scenery and circumstances surrounding the homicide both uncomfortably abject and the object of morbid fascination while utilizing a style that obviously pays homage to film noir, but the overall farfetched yet fairly predictable conclusion of the plot leaves much to be desired, as does Josh Hartnett's acting as a battered cop who's supposedly seen it all, a role that just wasn't suited to his age at the time of shooting this film (way too young, really). Aaron Eckhart does a better job at playing his colleague, as does Scarlett Johansson playing the obligatory beautiful but traumatized femme fatale. The love triangle between the three of them is generally irritating for hindering the progress of the film, but the overall story about abuse of power, corruption in the upper echelons of the law and the vicious objectification of women to deadly consequences remains interesting enough to carry most of the picture.

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson

Directed by Brian De Palma

USA: Universal Pictures, 2006