Picky-Chick Flick Diss

James Ellroy has given us extraordinary works such as L.A. Confidential and Brown's Requiem. Using real history as his canvas, he manages to take twists and turns like no other writer.

Ellroys' infatuation with Los Angeles crime and the inner workings of the movie business started at a young age. His father was an accountant by day and a Hollywood bottom-feeder and womanizer by night. His mother was brutally beaten and killed when Ellroy was a boy triggering an obsession with murder and corruption. Her murder is still unsolved. (read more of Ellroy's bio)

What all this leads to is an amazing collection of stories including the recent book to film adaptation of The Black Dahlia. Unfortunately, the big screen version isn't able to capture the film noir experience you get from Ellroy's pages. While the cast is true and believable, the script-writer, Josh Friedman, inevitably got lost in all of Ellroy's story lines and character flaws. What you get is a big old mess. It's too long...too boring...too slow. It manages to gloss over the gruesomely vicious details of Elizabeth Short's death and all the mystery behind her disturbing life. Friedman allows her story to lay as the backdrop to your everyday love and family drama between Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank.

This was a great opportunity to take us back in time...ignite the fire that "L.A. Confidental" did to us years ago...but sadly...fails miserable.

This Picky-Chick says, "skip it."