There are lots of characters in this movie but there are three that are highlighted early in the movie: Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Bud White (Russell Crowe), and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). They are all police officers but they each seem to be at different points in their career. Vincennes is the oldest of the three. He spends most of his time as a consultant on Badge of Honor, a TV show. White is a detective who gets suspended early in the movie because he won't testify against several other officers including his partner. Exley is the youngest of the three. He is pushing for a promotion. He wants to become a detective but his supervisor nixes it. An incident on Christmas Eve provides him the opportunity to jump the chain of command and get a promotion in return for testifying against several other officers.
Exley was put in charge of the station on Christmas Eve. That same night, several men, all Mexican Americans, are brought in for beating up a couple police officers. The beaten officers are in bad shape. Their fellow officers, led by Stensland, White's partner, start a fight with the Mexicans in the police station. It might have gone unreported but there was a reporter and photographer in the police station at the time who saw the whole thing and got pictures of the brawl.
So far it is very Hollywood, very flashy. It lacks substance. The clothes are right but there's nothing that interests me in them.
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Stensland gets the boot. He was a year short of retirement, a year short of being eligible for a pension. White gets re-instated. Vincennes returns to work on the vice squad but not on Badge of Honor. Several bodies are found in the Nite Owl, a diner. There are no survivors. Among the bodies are Stensland and Susan Lefferts. Lefferts was last seen in the company of Pierce Patchett, a pimp who specializes in women who look like movie stars. Exley wants this case but Smith takes it away from him and takes over the case himself. White follows a lead and has a chat with Patchett. A group of African American teens become the prime suspects in the case.
This story is told in a way that requires attention to detail if you want to understand it all but it is also a bit of a wild ride. You don't need to understand it all to enjoy it. It is plot driven and not character driven. If there is a character the movie focuses on then that character is the collective LAPD. It is in a bit of turmoil. There is generational conflict within it with characters like Smith holding on to the old way of doing things. I'm not sure if anyone is a true progressive within the department. Some go along to get along, I'm thinking of Vincennes and White, while one (Exley) tries to carve his own path but not for altruistic reasons. He's hung up on doing things his way and making a name for himself. He doesn't make any friends for himself but I'm not convinced that this makes him the hero of the movie or if the movie has a hero.
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The three suspects are brought in by Exley and Vincennes, with some help from a couple other cops. Vincennes and Exley get to the suspects location, a house, only to discover that the other two cops are already there. They find shotguns which are eventually matched to the ones used in the shooting at the Night Owl. Were those shotguns already there or did the other two cops plant them? They arrest the suspects and take them in for questioning. Exley handles the interrogation. He does what he can to play one suspects off against another. They claim to know nothing about the Night Owl but one of them blabs something about a woman.
The cops follow the information they get about the woman and her location. They find her bloody but alive and tied to a bed. White kills the guy who was holding her. and plants a gun to make it look like self-defense. Exley wants to question the woman. White pulls him away. The two cops almost get into a fist fight but several other cops pull White away from Exley. Word comes down that the three suspects who they left at the police station have escaped.
Exley goes after them with one of the cops who helped him apprehend the suspects in the first place. They find them holed up in an apartment. Someone drops a bottle. Exley isn't wearing him glasses and starts shooting when he hears the bottle break. Everyone except Exley is dead by the time the shooting stops. Exley is hailed as a hero for killing the three men responsible for the Night Owl massacre. Vincennes gets to go back to working on Badge of Honor. Everyone seems happy but there's still another hour to go in the movie.
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All three main characters begin to suspect that something is up but for different reasons. White starts a relationship with Lynn Bracken, after stalking her for a while. I could describe it differently but that's how it strikes me, as stalking. He sits in a car outside her place and watches as she gets visits from men, who are there for sex. Eventually he works up the nerve to knock on her door. She invites him in and the the relationship develops from there. He explains to her how his father beat his mother to death. I guess that is what passes for character development because that's about as emotional as he gets.
Vincennes works with Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), tabloid journalist. He helps him to set up the DA who is in the closet about his sexual preferences with an out of work male actor. Vincennes does so reluctantly and at the last minute gets cold feet. Hudgens is hoping for a big expose on the DA. Instead, the actor turns up dead. His throat was slit. What happened to the DA? Is he dead too? Unclear.
Exley talks to the rape victim from earlier in the movie as she is getting out of the hospital. She's glad the men who raped her are dead. She doesn't care if they are really the ones behind the massacre at the Night Owl.
Pierce Patchett throws some money into the development of the Santa Monica Freeway. The project is greenlit only after a city councilman changes his vote after being presented with evidence of his dalliances with Lynn Bracken, who works for Patchett.
White follows a hunch and pays a visit to Susan Lefferts' mother. She positively identifies Stensland, White's former partener, as her daughter's lover. White digs around in the Lefferts' home and finds a body which looks to be Meeks, a former cop who worked for Patchett. He takes the wallet but leaves the body. Later, Exley makes his way to the Lefferts home, finds the body and has it taken to the morgue. He asks Vincennes to tail White. Vincennes agrees but only if Exley will help him figure out what happened to the actor who got his throat slit.
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The plot thickens. Stuff happens. Before it is all over Vincennes and Hudgens are both dead, both killed by Captain Smith. Smith is also dead, killed by Exley. Apparently Smith was trying to take over where Mickey Cohen left off, when he was sent to prison. Smith was working with Meeks and Stensland, before he killed them or had them killed.
The ending is a little too pat for me but I can't say that I dislike this movie. I just don't think it quite lived up to my memory of it. It feels a little too Hollywood. There isn't enough grit. It might have worked better if the story had played out over the course of a six episode season. Some things just happened a little too quickly and easily for my tastes.
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