The moment when Bud and Ed team up

I watched L.A. Confidential for the first time in about nine years last night. It's a great film whose greatness I came to fully appreciate on my last viewing in 2012. Last night's viewing was just on a whim, just as a treat. 

Back in those days when I considered L.A. Confidential to function primarily as a rival for my favorite film of 1997, Titanic, whose attention from the critics made me vicariously jealous, I kind of didn't think it was all that. Oh, I clearly liked it -- you don't rank a film #12 for the year if you don't really like it -- but I resented its acclaim, because I felt that many of those same critics really didn't see the value in Titanic, and I imagined they were attacking my intellect and my tastes by bashing the James Cameron movie.

Titanic is still ranked higher on my Flickchart, but L.A. Confidential regularly gains ground in my estimation.

The thing I always forget about L.A. Confidential is how much of an entertainment it is, first and foremost. Since it was such a critical darling, I tend to think that it must be deep, or artsy, or Important. L.A. Confidential is not really any of those things. It doesn't need to be. It's just a crackerjack Hollywood crime story full of charismatic performers and great twists. Okay, not twists by the standards M. Night Shyamalan would establish a couple years later, but good narrative twists and turns that made you feel like you were on a amusement park ride, having the time of your life.

One of the simple, gut-level pleasures of L.A. Confidential is the moment our two heroes, who approach police work in polar opposite ways and are at each others' throats for much of the story, finally team up to get The Bad Guys. "Bad guys" is certainly a term of great relativity in L.A. Confidential, as many of the "good guys" are venal and compromised, and even the morally upright one has a pole up his ass and seems to go too far in the other direction, making him vaguely disagreeable as well.

But after a good hour and 45 minutes of gray areas, the movie does reduce things to good guys and bad guys, and it's that moment when Bud White (Russell Crowe) and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) finally realize they are working toward the same goals. Which is to take down the REAL bad guys.

The ensuing scenes between Ed and Bud are filled with such hopeful testosterone that you can't help but be swept up in them. You might almost call their new bond homoerotic, if you didn't see how drawn they both were to Kim Basinger.

As these guys enter rooms with guns drawn, almost engaging in that back-to-back dance of gunmen fighting off a circle of foes, throwing bullet clips and car keys to each other, it's like a well-oiled machine driven by a righteous purpose. The throwing of objects to one another especially captures their unified energy. You can't play catch with someone unless you like them, and you can't perfectly aim a projectile toward the other's hand, barely having even to announce your intention first, unless your minds are perfectly in sync.

And when they're holed up in the Victory Hotel, throwing mattresses and bureaus in front of the windows to block incoming gunfire, picking off corrupt cops with shotguns and pistols, it's invigorating as hell.

Another day I can tell you all the other great things about L.A. Confidential -- and how I watched the movie without gagging over Kevin Spacey's involvement -- but today I just want to talk about Bud and Ed.