L.A. Confidential (1997) | First Time Watching | FRR Reaction 

The Rollo Tomasi twist is one of the absolute greatest things in all of film.

Would’ve won Best picture in 1997 if it wasn’t for Titanic

That Rollo Tomassi moment is one of the greatest "Oh Shit" moments in film history.

Somebody is pointing you in the right direction because the movie picks lately have been 🔥🔥🔥.

Bill Nighy was the vampire from Underworld. The captain is played by James Cromwell, who was in Babe and The Green Mile, among others. This was the best role I've seen him in.

Yo, the way I f**king HOLLERED at "we were just having coffee". 😂😂 Absolutely brilliant of Jack to drop that Rollo Tomassi.

When reactors truly get both of the Rollo Tamassi reveals, it gives me hope for humanity

"He looking like a Mormon missionary" that made me laugh so hard. As a Mormon I can confirm he for sure looks like a missionary. Love this movie and your reaction.

Bud snapping that chair and the Rollo Tomassi parts are just the best.

My all-time favorite film. The most remarkable thing about it is how it creates so many apparently disparate plot threads at the beginning, to the point where you start to think the movie is basically an episodic look at police work, only for all of them to be woven together in the end. It's one of the most incredible pieces of screenwriting I've ever seen. This is also one of those very rare cases where reading the book gives you even more of an appreciation for the film, because the book is so massive and labyrinthine, it's just amazing that they managed to turn it into this tight, perfectly-plotted movie. That's Guy Pearce playing Ed, by the way. Like Russell Crowe, he's an Aussie actor. He's been in several absolutely wonderful movies, such as Chris Nolan's Memento, a really enjoyable version of The Count of Monte Cristo directed by Kevin Reynolds, and Antonia Bird's sadly underseen and underappreciated Ravenous.

Brahs, seriously one of the BEST films of the 90s, hands down. Also beautifully shot...it really looks like early 50s LA. Ya'll are hilarious too, White's jacket really does look like a rug LMAO

This is an S-Tier movie.

I'm in my late 70's, Mickey Cohen was a real gangster. Generally speaking from what I can remember: The 2 men who got shot in the car were real. The 2 men in the house with heroin were real. Johnny Stompanado, Cohen's bodyguard and real boyfriend to Lana Turner, real people. Johnny went to Scotland and accused Sean Connery of having an affair with Lana, while shooting a movie together. He pulled a gun on Connery who took the gun away, beating up Stompanado. The story is built around real corruption in the L. A. Police Dept. in the early 50's Lynn was safe with the Sheriff's dept., not the police dept.

LA Confidential is incredible. One of my top 20 movies all time for sure...

This movie is an under-seen gem. Such a great script and performances. Thanks for reacting to it!

👍 👍 Well done gentlemen. Probably the best film of the last 30 years.

Bro my favorite movie of all time. Phenomenal in every aspect

Insider, Fargo and LA Confidential? Honestly three of my top 10 all at once. Crazy coincidence.

As soon as I saw this one coming up, I knew you guys were in for a great time. One of the best movies and best screenplays of the 90s (and all-time, really)

1997's best film above Boogie Nights, Titanic, Jackie Brown, Donnie Brasco and Good Will Hunting

With all due respect to Gladiator (which I LOVE), this is by far my favorite Russell Crowe performance. I swear Bud White is every bit as crap your pants scary as Maximus himself if you're on his sh*t list😂

Bud White is one of my all time favorite characters. He's a bad dude to bad dudes but tries to do the right thing. He also knows when he's not smart enough and is willing to take a little help. He ain't perfect though. His girl broke him and he broke his own code. Great story arch. Glad he got even better than he deserved in the end. Enjoy Arizona bro.

One of my favorite movies and, I think, terribly underrated both in its time and now as far as getting the recognition it deserves. It was a pleasure experiencing it all over again with you guys.

Another banger. Keep picking gems from the peak era of my lifetime 90s - mid 00s.

So many people I know didn't see this until Crowe came out in Gladiator 3 years later, especially younger people my age (20) because it was set back in the "old days" lol. They missed out.

A lot of this movie is based on true events including, Bloody Christmas, The Formosa Restaurant, Mickey Cohen, The LA Gangster Squad that beat up mobsters, Badge of Honor is Dragnet, Hush Hush Magazine is Confidential Magazine. Even gangster Johnny Stompanato is real and was dating Lana Turner, eventually killed by her or possibly her daughter. Great movie, one of my all time favs!

Another great one, guys! It really is of a caliber so rare, that it tends to skew the perception of nearly anything that follows shortly thereafter.

Master and Commander with Russell Crowe should be on your list. One of the best Naval movies ever made.

Ed's character was played by Guy Pierce

18:58 the fabric on their sport coats/suit jackets are called Donegal tweed - appropriate for the winter season they are in during the time period.

If either of you like to read, the novel by James Ellroy is great. The story(ies) in this movie is maybe a third to half of what's in the book. It would've been a six hour movie if they didn't pare it down. The book is also one in a series of four novels from the author taking place in LA of the time. James Ellroy's story is also very interesting.

I don't know what it is about James Cromwell, but he knows how to play scary really, really well.

One of the two best neo-noirs of the late 20th century...The other is 1974's Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. If you want to go way back, the granddaddy of film noir is The Maltese Falcon (1941).

this is one of my All-Time Top 10 most favorite movies of ever! glad you liked it.

This film should have won the Oscar instead of Titanic

Midnight in the Garden of good and evil is also a great movie with Kevin Spacey.

Gotta watch Se7en and Usual Suspects next, those two and LA Confidential are three of the best 90s films for sure!

You guys have had some good recommendations lately. This movie had everything. Well casted actors, great acting, great twisty plot, great costumes and overall great damn movie. Enjoy! Oh Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce are powerhouses.

25:09 Veronica Lake was a very Iconic Hollywood star, but she didn't make many movies. The "Veronica Lake," look was long blonde hair that covered half her face.

This might be the best reaction of this movie that I've got to enjoy!! Got yerself a subscriber!!

Thank you for watching this movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed your guys reaction. You two had me crackin' up the whole time. I think you guys make an amazing team. This was the first time ever seeing you on RU-vid but it definitely won't be the last... you have an immediate subscriber. Thanks for the laughs. Good luck in you guys endeavors.

Devil in a Blue Dress is one you want to watch if we're going the Noir route. Night Crawler, Chinatown, Klute, Blue Velvet, Zodiac, Seven. If you haven't seen them i HIGHLY suggest you do.

James Ellroy wrote the novel & also The Black Dahlia. When he was a boy his mother was murdered in LA just a few years after Elizabeth Short. Her murder was also unsolved. I always thought Rolo Tomasi was the man that got away with his mother's murder. He's a very intense man but a wonderful writer.

Bud and Ed know Lynn is safe because they took her to the L.A. COUNTY Sheriff's station (the guys in the green coats). Dudley is with the L.A. CITY Police (blue uniforms), a different organization. The sheriffs have dealt with out of control cops before. And Lynn is with the WEST Hollywood station. Whereas Hollywood is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, West Hollywood is a separate city, like Beverly Hills. (Which has a its own police force, as seen in "Beverly Hills Cop".) "Rollo Tomasi" is a great reveal. I also like the subtle clue that Dudley is always sending out "two-man teams" to investigate and Mickey Cohen's men were being killed by two-men teams as well. (They mention it a few times.) I've always been amused by Jack being played by Kevin Spacey, since Jack is wanting to investigate the poor murdered gay actor, and we knew that Spacey bent that way *long* before he came out. After watching a few reactions, I've started wondering if JACK is meant to be closet gay, too. (He is wearing a big ol' pinky ring, which is said to be gay code. Not as specific as lesbians wearing thumb rings, but still.) Star of the film? Pierce Patchett's house. SO gorgeous. It's a real house; a 1929 Richard Neutra. (Neutra was Frank Lloyd Wright's prime Southern California disciple; he has a lot of nice buildings in Palm Springs, too.) And while this isn't SPECIFICALLY true, the L.A.P.D. didn't get known as "the gang in blue" for nothing. People didn't riot about Rodney King specifically over Rodney; it was all the shit the PD had been pulling since forever.

One of the times a movie was better than the book it was adapted from. Snappier and less gratuitous - honestly, I was damned impressed they managed to make something as good as THIS from it.

I like reactors who don’t need to talk constantly. In other words, I’m glad I came across y’all channel. Y’all need to watch Moneyball. Every person I’ve watched it with has loved it even people who can’t stand sports.

Guy Pearce (Exley) is also well-known for "Memento". Or "Iron Man 3", which is funny since you called him "Val Kilmer" and Pearce is practically doing a Val Kilmer impression in that one.

A noir classic.

The real people portrayed in the movie were Mickey Cohen, Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato. Stompanato was killed by Lana's daughter in defense of her mother, and the timeframe of their relationship was fudged a little but it suited the payoff for the "she is Lana Turner" joke.

Yeah, Chino was just grazing land for dairy cows and Otay the same. Vacaville was still 10 years away. All the Fed lock-up in California was funneled into San Quentin, which was a nightmare.

I don't know either of you from Adam, but it's always such a great joy to watch another (2) discover a really superior movie, to witness as the twists unfold and be genuinely surprised the way we were upon first viewing, it's great fun to share in your enjoyment and discovery, thanks for a great reaction video

Great reaction, guys!!! It's one of my favorite movies, and you two knocked it out of the park!

Ed was Guy Pierce. Moments is a MUST!

Devito gives Spacey leads, and then Spacey goes and arrests people and Devito pays him so he can go take pictures of it for his magazine

One of my favorites man hyped to watch, Banger!

Nice review, Gentlemen! The book that this movie was based on was written by James Ellroy. "The Black Dahlia", "The Big Nowhere", and "White Jazz" are books based on the same characters that were in this film. Check them out.

1:10:37: "Wait there is something right here." "It's the actor posing with the D. A." "Yeah, I see the D. A." "And then there's the actor at the end. And they show the screen of 'SGT. JACK -- DEDICATED TO SGT. JACK VINCENNES'." "So this is real then." Kind of. "L.A. Confidential" (the book upon which this film is based) was a work of historical fiction written by author James Ellroy that incorporated real world historical figures and events into a fictional story that was told from perspective of three invented characters. As I understand it, the mass shooting at the "Nite Owl Cafe" as well as the "Bloody Christmas" police brutality scandal actually happened, but the characters involved in those events as well as the circumstances surrounding them were completely made up. Micky Choen was a real-life historical figure who ran the Jewish mob in Los Angeles and was indeed arrested for tax evasion. Choen really did employ a bodyguard named Johnny Stompanado who was in a relationship with an actress named Lana Turner. Rumors persist that there actually was a Hollywood based prostitution ring in the 50's where the escorts were made up to look like then present-day film stars. As far as I know these rumors have never been concretely proven, and it was never suggested that the prostitutes underwent plastic surgery, just that their clothes and look were tailored to resemble someone famous. The Arrest of Micky Choen and a missing container of heroin did create a power vacuum that lead to a mob war. But as far as I know, the idea that a group of high-ranking police officers tried to take over was invented for the book. However, it really wouldn't surprise me if that was also inspired by a genuine conspiracy theory from the 50s. The show "Badge of Honor" was fake, but it was inspired by a television series called Dragnet, which was noted as being the first cop show of it's kind on television. There was never a publication called "Hush-Hush Magazine", but it's a stand in for any number of tabloid publications which (as I understand it) were the first of their kind as well. 1:27:58: "One more thing, too -- Ed (low-key I was going to call him Val Kilmer) but I need to know -- I need y'all to comment down below if you made it this far -- what's his name?" Ed Exley is played by an Australian actor named Guy Peirce and "L.A. Confidential" was his first major American movie. He's probably best known in the states for staring in the Christopher Nolan film "Memento (2001)" and playing Aldrich Killian in "Iron Man Three (2013)" Peirce is an actor in the vein of Johnny Depp and Ed Norton where you could put his roles in "Percilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)", "The Proposition (2005)" and "Lawless (2012)" up against "L.A. Confidential" and it would take people a minute to realize that it was the same guy.

Copland with Sly Stallone is another great corrupt cops movie.

This is one of my favorite movies, I think in every way it is practically perfect.

"L.A. Confidential" was the Big Break into Hollywood for both young lead actors, both of whom are Australian. Kim Basinger won her Academy Award for her role in this. Writer-director Curtis Hanson had made a Canadian thriller in the late 1970s, called "The Silent Partner", starring Elliot Gould and the great Christopher Plummer as a kinky, sadistic mall Santa Claus trying to secretly rob a bank during the Holidays. That is one hell of a good movie and I recommend it to you for your reactions --- perhaps as a Christmas movie. One of the unusual things about "Silent Partner" is that it wasn't merely shot in Toronto, pretending to be a U.S. city; the Canadian city was acknowledged in the story as being Toronto. And watch for a young John Candy in a couple of scenes, before becoming famous in "SCTV". --- OronOfMontreal

The guy that you said you've seen in a lot of movies is Guy Pearce, if you haven't seen it yet check out " Momento" it's 🔥!

This is the movie that should have gotten most of those 11 Oscars in 1997! NOT Titanic! Loved the Rollo Tomasi plot device! An ingenious means of posthumous communication. Vincennes’ ghost might as well have showed up and named his killer.

Great film 👍🏻 Edit, its sooooo good to otbers enjoying an awesome film 🙂🙂

🔥 reaction good job gents. 👍

love this film, great reaction

9:30 Pierce Patchett was played by David Strathairn who later did a spectacular job playing Secretary of State Seward in "Lincoln" in 2012. 30:35 That's right...those two dudes in the garage were "farming" that day. 44:44 That is the worst smell in the world.

Hush-Hush magazine was a replacement for "Confidential" magazine in the 50's.

Did you recognize Pierce Patchen. He was Mr. Wegler in The Sopranos, he smashed Carmela while AJ was failing in class.

This movie is the definition of a hidden gem. I had to watch yalls reaction to Dudley saying Rollo Tomassi a few times cuz I had the same type of reaction when I first saw it haha.

Fun fact: There was a failed tv pilot based on this film called L.A. Confidential. Starring Kiefer Sutherland

Its only the premiere, video not live yet but i cant wait for this reaction! I know you guys will love this movie! Lets go!

You guys know Pierce Paget as the teacher that Carmela Soprano was “dating” in season 5

Another good hidden gem is the movie Crash 2004, Superstar cast old black and white actors.

wow you been doing great reactions lately, filling the sopranos hole nicely DAT ENERGEYYYYYY

Stone classic!

Shoutout to Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger & James Cromwell too 👏👏👏

Yo bro dude that plays Captain Dudley isn’t the same dude from Underworld. Different actor. I’m a new subscriber. Keep it killing it guys

Damn. Tbis is one of those movies I keep wanting to watch but keep forgetting. Hope you guys are doing well

Watch all the special features that came out with the release of the deluxe dvd. It’ll make you watch this a few more times.

I was WAITING far yall to get to the Rollo Tomasi part man 😂

Fantastic flick

I like Guy Pearce better than Deniro. He's amazing in 'the proposition' a gritty Australian western.

See THE NICE GUYS!

Why did you have chills when Spacey said "Rollo Tomasi" to Dudley...? =__= Did you understand why he did right from the start? That would make you smarter than most of us. :D

52:33 right now is a perfect time to start the movie over. There's no way anybody caught everything on their first watch through

Danny Devito in a backpack tak tak tak 😂

I read the book many times and thought it couldn't be made into a film. Too many storylines, how can you bring them together in one film. Luckily, I was seriously mistaken. This is an outstanding film with an outstanding cast. You're doing a good job.

I love this movie SO much. Definitely not reacted to as much as it should be.

Mickey Cohen was a real guy

Pure gold.

Always loved since a kid in the 90's that they did actually treat the 3 main characters as a gang like u had Russell Crowe as the "Thug" that just fucked folks up & Guy Pierce as the "Hustla" that was tryna make his career known & jus get by & then Kevin Spacy as the "Gangsta" that been round the block longer than everyone else & that everyone actually loved & respected & was just tryna get that quick buck real quick like in the streets & actually went out like a real gangsta like we always do in real life!!!!! This movie a masterpiece frfr 💯 10/10 for me ❤️ This movie different ASF & one of a kind masterpiece fr The Gangsta , The Thug , & The Hustla 💯

Good choice of a movie. This one is one of the better ones out there.

One of my favourite films. Has everything you want from a movie. You guys should also watch Cop Land if you haven’t seen it yet. Highly underrated with an amazing cast. Stallones best film in my opinion.

8:28 Bing Crosby sings a Christmas song in the background.

I watched this movie countless times and never put together the shooting in the back of Dudley til you guys said “is he willing to go to shoot a suspect who is guilty in the back. Thx

See Memento. Right up your alley...

If you liked this one, check out Devil in a Blue Dress with Denzel Washington, and Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke - both great neo-noir films on the same level as L.A. Confidential. Also, on the subject of dirty cops, and good cops - Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" (1958) is a masterpiece - just make sure you watch the 1998 edit that incorporates Welles' 52-page memo on how he wanted the film edited.

One of my Favorites

I'd love to see you guys watch Bone Tomahawk. A Western Horror with Kurt Russell and Patrick Wilson