Hold up your badge

“Hold up your badge, so they'll know you're a policeman.”

I ended up watching LA Confidential again last night on the newly, brilliantly free FilmFour. I hadn’t intended to but it’s one of those films that just sucks you in and then two and a half hours later…

The art direction and design are flawless (you *are* in 1950s Los Angeles), the narrative and characters satisfyingly complex and believable - overall one of Hollywood’s finer moments. (Here’s hoping for The Black Dahlia, opening this weekend. And everyone said a James Ellroy movie-of-the-book couldn’t be made…)

The fabulous thing about a film this layered is that each time you view it, something new angles its way out of the screen at you. And I don’t just mean the twisty nuances of the three-cops-investigating-a-multiple-homicide plot.

There’s “Hollywood Jack” Vincennes with his bribes and celebrity, Bud White with his enforcer brutality and angry, violent past, and Ed Exley with his adherence to the rulebook and his determination to get ahead. These are their “badges” – of rank and standing, of honour, of respect, of doing what needs to be done to get the job done.

And last night what I saw afresh was that each of these three cops chooses to tear down the very thing that is seen to make them great – by trying to make belated amends for a bad call, kicking the violent habit in favour of some thoughtful investigation, and finally breaking the rules for the greater good. The thing that makes them, that gives them their name, their fame, their reputations and reward – their “badge” - is the very thing that they choose to tear down, to take the wrecking ball to…

Bud White: The Night Owl case made you. Do you want to tear all that down?
Ed Exley: With a wrecking ball. You want to help me swing it?

Each of them is trying to find their own place in the topsy-turvy world of justice and morality.
Hey – welcome to the real world and the 21 century. Hold up your badge.