I understand this film was different, yeah I admit I really wanted this film to be focused in the black dahlia murder incident. But unfortunately it was more focused in the detectives personal life. so... I heard the book was really good.

A slow-moving plot and too many subplots make this a less enjoyable movie than it could have been. I thought Harnett was OK, but the movie meandered through subplot after subplot and the Black Dahlia only seemed to play a veyr minor part,...
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A slow-moving plot and too many subplots make this a less enjoyable movie than it could have been. I thought Harnett was OK, but the movie meandered through subplot after subplot and the Black Dahlia only seemed to play a veyr minor part, literally and figuratively.

A boring, miscasted mess, it takes the intriguing real life murder story and bogs it down in a poorly constructed script with a meandering pace. It makes sense that it's a DePalma flick, the director who is remarkably consistent in his mediocrity....
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A boring, miscasted mess, it takes the intriguing real life murder story and bogs it down in a poorly constructed script with a meandering pace. It makes sense that it's a DePalma flick, the director who is remarkably consistent in his mediocrity. Yes, Scarface sucked too.

I really wanted to like this movie. I did. So given that I'm not going to be one of those people who says it sucks because it wasn't really about the Black Dahlia murder or wasn't credible to the actual murder or anything like that. No I read...
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I really wanted to like this movie. I did. So given that I'm not going to be one of those people who says it sucks because it wasn't really about the Black Dahlia murder or wasn't credible to the actual murder or anything like that. No I read the book so I knew what it was about to begin with.

Ok. I heard about this from some magazine about a year ago. I looked at the cast and thought hey this looks interesting. Then the trailer came out, and I was like sweet this actually looks good. I bought the book and read it, and was excited about this movie coming out. Then it did, and I dragged some of my friends to it opening day. I was embarassed.

First let me start off with the positives I had. The sets were amazing. The costuming was amazing. The cinematography was amazing. And that was about it. I will say that Hartnett does seem fit for a film noir type role. And that's about it.

Ok now the bad. I loved the story... of the book. I was really disappointed about how much it strayed from the original story. Now I know it's an adaptation, and you can never be completely true to the original (I mean look at the Harry Potter movies), but you need to keep the same ideas as the original story, no matter how much you deviate. The story was about corruption in the police force mixed in with a little obsession. Yeah de Palma completely blew that. The movie was all over the place and wasn't coherent one bit. Actually some of my friends fell asleep. I had a headache leaving the theater. They ruined the mother's character, especially at the end. The acting wasn't that great. I could see Hartnett in noir, but even still he was bad.

Yeah um, that's all that I can say because it's been a while since I saw this. The only way I'm going to recommend this movie is because it's nice to look at. That's about it. If you want to see this movie, read the book instead. It is far more entertaining.