L.A. Confidential

The premiere of _When Worlds Collide (1951)_ (qv) is depicted as occurring in December 1952.

The glass of scotch that Lynn gives to White at her house disappears, and then reappears again.

In the street scene after the kidnapped girl is rescued, a blue US Postal Service box is visible.

Mailboxes were painted olive drab until the color scheme was changed to red, white and blue on July 4, 1955.

The US Postal Service did not exist until 1971, when it replaced the U.

Post Office Department.

Prior to 1971, equipment, including trucks and mail boxes, were labeled "U.

Mail".

Mrs.

Lefferts' glasses (side bit) move from being under her kerchief on top of it (without her taking the glasses off) when Bud White interviews her at her home.

White's car leaves dust clouds when he leaves the Victory Motel on the way to Lynn's house during the rain storm.

White leaves Lynn's house when it is raining; it is still raining when he fights with Exley in the records room, yet when they confront the District Attorney, it is clear outside with scant evidence of rain having fallen.

However, these locations are far enough apart that this is possible; in addition, there are rain streaks and tire tracks that imply the rain had fallen there earlier.

In the final scene, two woman walk past each other, behind and to Ed's left, as he is standing on the sidewalk.

However, when he is seen through the rear window of the car - from Bud's perspective - the original women have disappeared and two new women (walking together, toward Ed) have taken their place.

In the last scene, when Lynn is opening the car, you can see a reflection of the crew in the car door.

When Ed Exley asks Lynn Bracken what she can tell him about Dudley Smith, she says she has never heard of him.

While unlikely to be true, she was quite possibly lying.

When Exley talks to Vincennes about Rolo Tomassi, 'Guy Pearce (I)' (qv)'s Australian accent accidentally slips when he tells Jack, "I just wanna solve this thing".

When White meets Dudley for a drink, he asks, "What do you want, Captain?", although he is mouthing something else.

When Dudley breaks up a fight between White and Exley, he tells Exley not to bother White when his blood is up, although he is mouthing something else.

During several outside shots, especially during the raid on the kidnappers' den, downtown Los Angeles can be seen in the background featuring buildings that were not completed until several years later.

The phone number of Fleur-de-Lis is CRestview 2239.

At the time, Los Angeles was using a mixture of phone numbers with 4 and 5 digits after the exchange (what today we would call 6 and 7 digit phone numbers).

When Sid Hudgeons is talking to Jack Vincennes about the male hooker, his words don't match his lips.

When Exley blasts one of the rapists out of the window, there is clearly an enormous belt around the man's waist, to yank him backwards.

In one shot, when Bud White is dangling the D.

out the window, the actor's safety cable is visible.

In the scenes showing the pot bust the marijuana is shown in a plastic baggie which did not exist in 1953.

At the start just after Ed Exley is interviewed Edmund Exley and Dudley Smith walk down the stairs of the police station where Dudley picks up two drinks, he hands one to Ed and the other for himself.

When Dudley walks away his has disappeared.

When we see the kidnapper of Inez Soto watching TV just before White sneaks up on him and shoots him, the carton of milk on the coffee table is of today's "fold-open top" design, which was not invented until well after the early 1950s.

During the fight between the cops and the Mexicans, the newspaper photographer raises his camera to take a photo.

When he does so, the flashbulb fires; however, the resulting photo was obviously not taken with a flash.

If it was, the officers in the foreground would have been overexposed and the rest of the scene would have looked more as though it were lit from the front, rather than from the sides and above.

In the Nite Owl café murder scene, as the camera pans over the café, the mustard and ketchup are seen to be in plastic containers.

In the 1950s, mustard and ketchup always came in glass bottles.

When Det.

Jack Vincennes is sitting in the Frolic Club he unfolds a 50 dollar bill which has a green 'FIFTY' on the right side and a "B" signifying the Federal Reserve office on the left.

None of these symbols were used on bills from the early 1950's.

When Jack Vincennes finds Matt Reynolds's body, there is a close-up shot on Matt's face.

In that shot you can clearly see that the vein in his neck is still moving.

During the shootout scene, White draws a wheel handgun after shooting the first henchman.

He fires at least 7 shots without reloading, too many for a wheel handgun, which usually carries 6.

During the shot of when Bud White's vehicle arrives at Pierce Patchett's house, there is a JUMP-CUT where several frames have been removed.

This is noticeable just before Bud opens his car door, the trees in the background appear to suddenly skip in motion.

In the scene outside the liquor store where Bud White confronts Buzz Meeks, the scene ends with White (who previously had disarmed Meeks) unloading Meeks' revolver and handing it back to him.

When White unloads the revolver he spins the cylinder which makes a distinctive series of clicks, an audio effect often heard in films.

However, only old style single action revolvers (the type seen in westerns) make this sound when their cylinders are spun.

Spinning the cylinder on a modern double action revolver makes no sound whatsoever.

When the DA is talking to Bud White in his bathroom in front of the mirror, at one point, his lips don't match what is heard.

When Bud White drives up to the Victory Motel for the interrogation of Sid Hudgens, it is raining heavily and the sky is gray and overcast.

But in the brief shot of Bud running through the doorway, the parking lot in the background is bathed in bright sunshine.

The story takes place in 1953.

Johnny Stompanato and 'Lana Turner' (qv) did not meet until 1957.

At the Victory Motel shoot out, Dudley Smith is clearly seen shooting Bud White in the right cheek after he stabs Dudley in the leg.

At the end of the movie when Bud White is sitting in a vehicle saying goodbye to Ed Exley, the bandage is on his left cheek.

However, Bud also has clearly visible barely closed wound on the right cheek.

Exit wounds are usually more severe than entry wounds so the bandage on the left side on the face is justified, assuming that the bullet penetrated both cheeks.

At the end of the Victory Motel shootout, when Exley stands next to Captain Smith's dead body while holding his badge up, 'James Cromwell (I)' (qv)'s body is clearly seen moving up and down as the actor is breathing.

In the shooting scene involving two whites and two blacks, The blood on Exley's face is smeared in one way when he is chasing the fourth guy and in another way when he shoots through the lift in the next shot, even though no blood could spill through the lift doors.

Susan Lefferts is supposedly dead, yet her body has goosebumps.

In the final scene, Ed and Lynn are facing each other yet the sun is shown as being behind both of them.

When Bud White rushes into the morgue to find Dick Stensland's body, one of the sheets he turns up uncovers an older man with grey hair who appears to have almost had the skin scraped off of him (or maybe burned off).

In a later scene where Exley is speaking to the coroner about the identification of another corpse, an event depicted as occurring days later, the coroner is doing an autopsy on the same body.

It's obvious that the production crew simply recycled the body, but in reality, it would have been a grievous error for a coroner to wait so long to do an autopsy.

When two of 'Mickey Cohen' (qv)'s henchmen are gunned down in their car (right after the scene where Bud White gets his badge and gun back from Dudley), the outline of an explosive squib can be seen on each actor's forehead before the gunfire begins.

(at around 1h 50 mins) When Bud White is dangling DA Loews out of a window, you can see a wire going to the DA's feet.

(There is no visual shown of a phone and no resolution given to suggest anything other than a safety harness.

) When Bud White confronts Ed Exley in the hospital just outside the morgue, a modern lit "EXIT" sign above the door can be clearly seen in the background.

Lynn Bracken tells Bud White, "Sue [Lefferts] came on the bus with dreams of Hollywood.

This is how they turned out.

" Later, White tells Johnny Stompanato that Meeks is "under a house in Elysian Park and he don't smell too good.

" The Lefferts' house is in a Los Angeles neighborhood, so Lefferts wouldn't have come on a bus.

Brian Helgeland's original script placed the Lefferts' house in "San Berdoo," or San Bernardino, so Bracken's line would have been consistent before the location change.

Bud White smashes Ellis Loew's face into his bathroom mirror, twice, and you can hear the glass breaking.

If one looks at the mirror, however, it is completely intact.

During the fight in the records room of the police station, Bud White inflicts several bruises to the right side of Exley's face.

In the very next scene Exley's face is clear, but when he shows up at Lynn Bracken's home, his face is bruised and discolored again.

At the end of the movie when Exley is being questioned, it can be seen that he has stitches on the right side of his face and a broken left arm.

A few minutes into his questioning (around 2:09:37) there is a close up on Exley which shows both injuries being on the left side of his body; however, in the remaining scenes it goes back to the injury (stitches) on his face being on the right side and the broken arm being on the left.

As Bud White views Sid Hudgen's body in Hudgens's office, a uniformed policeman addresses him as "Sergeant White.

" Bud White was a plain clothes Detective, but did not hold the rank of sergeant.

As Jack is entering the hotel room to find Matt Reynolds dead on the floor you can hear "How Important Can It Be?" by Joni James, which didn't come out until 1955.

The movie is set in 1953.

People seem to feel the need to compare this remarkable film with the film noir genre as well as with the time honored classic Chinatown. Although they are not wrong in their comparisons, LA Confidential should be taken as a great film in its own right.

L.A.

With 8.3 rating out of 10 by 397,440 educated and registered viewers of the film around the world at http://www.

In 1997, five films were up for the category of best picture – of those "LA Confidential" was a contender. It was an up and down year for the Academy, having the highest grossing picture on the ticket doesn't really allow room for small independent features to see the light of day.

L.A Confidential is an excellent neo-noir detective film.

I didn't even wait until the movie was over. I took it out in the middle.

This film about corruption in the LAPD back in the 1950's is, even though fairly recent, a classic film noir. It's beautifully adapted screenplay has given the actors ways to give their characters depth (which they did so easily).

L.A.

I watched this years ago, not long after it came out on DVD, and remember being bored by it despite its generally good reception. Seemed like a good time to give it another chance, and I'm glad I did.