The trailer begins with a screen test in black and white. A young dark haired starlet walks up to the camera with her script in hand saying a few lines before the director's voice cuts her off and says that this is intended to be a sad scene and if she can play it that way. The screen test is to be taking place in the nineteen forties, but we know it's not, because the camera is on the floor instead of the traditional method at face level and when she walks away to do it over, she turns in slow motion. Although based on a true story of an actual murder in Hollywood, it's clear factual events are a state of mind for this film noir titled "The Black Dahlia."
The next scene is Josh Hartnett driving a car in the rain, his face a blank mask, the only one he ever wears, narrating in flashback that the woman who was murdered was named Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner). Detectives and police converge on the crime scene. A doctor in black overalls says the body was cut in half as a flash of an axe falls on the victim, and that she's been disembowled and her face sliced wide. "Inspired by real events" says titles in front of the sexy curve of a woman's body. How about inspired by sex? "It was the most notorious murder in California history, to the public it was a sensation," Hartnett says, as scenes show him searching for clues, studying film clips of Elizabeth Short and his partner (Aaron Eckhart) getting upset at the screening and pushing the contents of his desk to the floor. "To us, it will become an obsession," he concludes.
"You've got to do something, he's been like this since last night," Scarlett Johansson in blonde locks asks Eckhart for help when she thinks her husband is too involved with the case. She gets even more upset when he is flirting with Hilary Swank. "She looks like that dead girl, how sick of you," she says to Hartnett. Swank confesses that she made love to Kirshner once to find out what it would feel like to do it with someone that looked like her. In this film, brunettes have stolen the fun.
As the strum of a guitar rises with a steady beat, scenes show women in lingerie, a man falling from a stairwell, a chandelier crashes, a switchblade flicks open. The music comes to an end and we return to Hartnett driving in his car. "Nothing stays buried forever."
The director is Brian De Palma and the scenes have the flat, slightly cheap look of his work on "Body Double". The screenplay is based on a book by James Ellroy who was responsible for "L.A. Confidential." These are strong crime fiction roots, but Josh Hartnett who plays the main detective has no acting range, so I'm doubtful he can hold the film together. With all the embedded star power, it looks to be a film that will falter due to miscasting.
Opening September 15, 2006, Verdict: Wait for the Critics
