Plot
Against the backdrop of Los Angeles in 1953, three LAPD officers become caught up in corruption, sex and murder following a multiple homicide at the Nite Owl coffee shop. Their story expands to encompass organized crime, political corruption, narcotics, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism and institutional racism.
Sergeant Edmund Exley (Pearce), the son of a legendary LAPD detective, is determined to live up to his father's reputation. His intelligence, insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor contribute to his social isolation from other officers. He exacerbates this resentment by volunteering to testify in a police brutality case (based on the real-life Bloody Christmas incident), insisting on a promotion to Detective Lieutenant (which he receives) against the advice of Captain Dudley Smith (Cromwell). It is revealed that Exley's consuming ambition is fueled in large part by the murder of his father by an unknown assailant.
Officer Wendell "Bud" White (Crowe), whom Exley considers a "mindless thug," is a plainclothes officer violently obsessed with punishing woman-beaters. White comes to dislike Exley after his partner, Dick Stensland, is fired due to Exley's testimony in the "Bloody Christmas" scandal. White is sought out by Capt. Smith for a job intimidating out-of-town criminals trying to fill the void left in L.A. following the imprisonment of Mickey Cohen, the city's most successful and notorious gangster. The Nite Owl case becomes personal after Stensland is found to be one of the victims.
Sergeant Jack Vincennes (Spacey) is a slick and likable narcotics detective who moonlights as the technical advisor on Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-type TV crime program. He is also connected with Sid Hudgens (DeVito), publisher of Hush-Hush magazine, receiving kickbacks for tipping Hudgens off to celebrity arrests that will attract even more readers to the magazine. When a young actor winds up dead during one of these schemes, a guilt-ridden Vincennes is determined to find who did it.
At different intervals, the three men investigate the Nite Owl killings and concurrent events which in turn begin to reveal indications of corruption all around them. Exley pursues absolute justice, all the while trying to live up to his family name. Bud White pursues Nite Owl victim Susan Lefferts, which leads him to Lynn Bracken (Basinger), a Veronica Lake look-alike prostitute with ties to the case he and Exley are independently investigating. Meanwhile, Vincennes follows up on a pornography racket with ties to both the Nite Owl and Bracken's handler Pierce Patchett (Strathairn), operator of Fleur-de-Lis, a call-girl service that runs prostitutes altered by plastic surgery to resemble popular movie stars. All three men's fates are intertwined. A dramatic showdown eventually occurs with powerful and corrupt forces within the city's political leadership and the department.
Read more about this topic: L.A. Confidential (film)
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