Revealing mistake: When the body of Miss Lefferts is being viewed, the 'dead' girl blinks slightly. (00:34:35)
La Confidential (1997)
Plot summary
Directed by: Curtis Hanson
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger, James Cromwell
L.A. Confidential is set in 1950's Los Angeles is the seedy backdrop for this intricate noir-ish tale of police corruption and Hollywood sleaze. When someone's killing imprisoned mob boss Mickey Cohen's gang. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each in their own style: Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), the golden boy of the police force, willing to do almost anything to get ahead, except sell out; Bud White (Russel Crowe), ready to break the rules to seek justice, but barely able to keep his raging violence under control; and Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), always looking for celebrity and a quick buck until his conscience drives him to join Exley and White down the one-way path to find the truth behind the conspiracy of the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner which may connected to the slayings of Cohen's gang members and maybe a lot more.
More mistakes in La Confidential
Bud White: Merry Christmas.
Lynn Bracken: Merry Christmas to you, officer.
Bud White: That obvious, huh?
Lynn Bracken: It's practically stamped on your forehead.
Trivia: Had the film been successfully adapted into a TV series, Jack Vincennes would have been played by Kiefer Sutherland. Coincidentally, one of Sutherland's co-stars in The Sentinel (2006) is Kim Basinger, who won an Oscar for her role in this film; James Cromwell played his father in season six of "24."
Question: Ed Exley recommends that the LAPD shift the blame for Bloody Christmas to men whose pensions are secured, and he names Bud White and Richard Stensland as two such men. But when Dudley Smith later tells Bud White that Stensland has been forced to retire, White says "A year from his pension!" So was Stensland entitled to a pension or not?
Answer: Exley is suggesting two things: to shift some blame to three officers with secured pensions and forcing them to retire; when he refers to White and Stensland though, he is saying "someone has to swing" and that they should be charged, tried and imprisoned - so Stensland is not entitled to a pension.
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Suggested correction: It's not uncommon for dead bodies to continue moving after death. Many internal parts of the body continue functioning in some fashion for hours after death and nerves and muscles can twitch.
raywest ★