You have to wonder just how vibrant the film would have been during the Reagan or Clinton administration, when De Palma was in his prime.

Forty-five minutes in, I was already glancing at my watch and wondering why the only lively actress in this film was playing the dead girl. Go figure.

Ellroy's prose crawls into characters' secret hearts and under the reader's skin, but its foetid horrors become kitschy here, the script too streamlined and the lead performances too shallow to dredge the story's depths.

A curious, but good looking mess. Hilary Swank and Fiona Shaw steal every scene, but the competing storylines don't often mesh well. The film should have just pulled the trigger on the central throuple