the movie has betty at 20-something, not 15. the blonde girl that she did the stag film with was 15

Thank God, jallport1990 I'm not alone! I love this film and have watched it many times, not because I'm confused in any way, but because I find it exciting, Mia Kirshner was fantastic and I adore Josh Hartnett.
Only in Show Biz by injection

There's nothing to understand my friend, this movie was garbage. It was a complete and utter waste of talent, film, writers and above all else a good story. It was a giant piece of s@it.
Watch LA Confidential and just forget about this and anything Brian DeDouchebag has ever done. Including Scarface (yeah I said it).
There will never be anyone quite like Audrey Hepburn

OK, you couldn't understand a movie because it actually makes you sit there and think about it. James Ellroy, the author the novel, which is a noir classic, is the master of the complex seedy underworld that Chandler and Hammett made famous and DePalma brings a nice dark look to the story, which is completely original, and if oyu just pay attention, everything makes complete sense in this movie. I love it.
It's more than a story about the Black Dahlia, its a story about that whole era, its a story about the "Brotherhood" of police officers, of corruption, and the steamy underworld of 1950s LA watch it again with a more open mind, you just may surprise yourself and see what a great movie it is.

Thank goodness. I watched this movie yesterday after a long day at work and I thought I was really, REALLY tired because I understood nothing. My reactions throughout the whole movie were: "What?!" or "Ok" I'm glad I'm not alone!

Read the book. Clearly not as good as la confidential, but pretty good.
Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.

Just saw and and still try to figure out the plot. Has anybody written a decent synopsis on this board ?

THis film is pretty terrible, I'm an hour in and I'm giving up.

Bugger I really enjoyed the book and only watched 30 minutes of the film before falling asleep, but by the sounds of it the movie really detracts from the book.
Thanks for the post Fishheadsweety you should get an award for sitting through that
Hell is other People

SPOILERSThis movie has the worst script and acting. if you haven't seen it, don't it's pathetic.
spoiler 1. Hillary Swank's mother kills the Dahlia because her creepy boyfriend had the hots for her and women are always killing 15 year olds in a sadistic, mutilating fashion. never men. it's the MO of drunk women.
Spoiler 2. Josh Hartnet has to sleep with or the F-word Hillary Swank because he has the hots for her, even though she's a creepy suspect. and says the F-word because it's edgy and we've never heard such language before. then josh kills Hillary because she killed his partner who had tried to make him the patsy for stealing money from the murder scene where the partner, unbeknown to Josh, had committd the murders.
it's a horribly trite formula movie. box. say f-word. have sex. say f-word. kill somebody. repeat. for 2 hours. i don't think it has anyhing to do with real black dahlia case.
Ask a fish head anything you want to, they won't answer. They can't talk.

Here is a website that tells it all, at least it explained for me wth happenend in the movie! It's a long story, but you should read it all and you will understand it better!!!
http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/blackdahlia.html

Okay well this movie is based on the murder of elizabeth short, she was a wannabe actress that died in 1949.. google her and there should be a website with pictures and stuff..mind you there absolutely discusting so if you have a weak stomach dont look at them
hope that helps a bit

the film was sort of confusing, and that's the reason i even clicked on this feed; to try and understand it better. i knew right after the boxing match ended that it would be a film i would need to watch carefully and pick up every detail. the level of confusion reminded me of the prestige, which was good just as this film was, but had several different levels to the plot, making it hard to comprehend. overall, a very good film, but i think i will need to watch it at least once more to fully understand the plot, or better yet, read the novel it was based on.

What was this movie about?
It was about 2 hours but felt a lot longer.
Okay, it was about ACTING, in the worst way. And DIRECTING (wow, wouldn't this be a neat camera angle!!)
It's a fakey, almost-parody of film noir.
In all: a mess.

I know that this thread is super old, but can you explain why Lee(Eckart's character) was blackmailing Madeline's father to begin with? Did it have to do with the shady building developments or something? I was just a little lost on some of the minor connecting points in the end. The big stuff was pretty easy once it was all said and done, but it was late when I watched and the subplots were getting very tedious by the end.

That's exactly right, you have to watch and listen carefully right to the end of the movie. The answers to the various questions raised are not easily given and this is probably why many people do not like this movie. I enjoyed it.

They did say why Eckart's character was angry. It was something like his sister was killed by a child molester.
He was not overacting in the context of cinema of the period.
The reason Madeline killed him is because he beat up and was blackmailing her father.
The movie makes sense, you just have to watch it carefully as the answers are given once and then not referred to again.

Its a really bad movie that definitely would have worked better if they dropped the phoney contrived ending. Eckart's character was overacting all over the place and they never really gave a reason as to why he was so angry all the time (they mighttt have said why with like one passing line)

Tell me about it. I read and loved the book and I left the movie theatre utterly confused.

If you read the book, the boxing match is one of the MOST important scenes throughout the entire story, but was never fully highlighted during the film version. What a shame too because I found the book to be so good. The movie version is crap. It starts out good, but somewhere along the middle, director De Palma decides that there is not enough time to tell everything and tries to rush everything in and even makes his own make-believe ending. He also leaves all the important police politics stuff out (which I thought was what made the book such an awesome read). Also, Bucky Bleichart's obsession with the Dahlia case never really took enough time to bloom. Sad, sad, sad, because the story had so much potential.

Well you basically have to ignore the boxing match at the beginning, it's meaningless. The movie really starts with the shootout or the "bank robbery" I think they called it. After this the film is filled with meaningless scenes, there aren't really any hints as to who killed Elizabeth, at the end it's explained that Emmett's introduced Elizabeth to the crazy clown guy and that Emmett's wife killed her because she's crazy ? And I don't know why Madeline killed Lee, I guess he was going to figure it all out (you have to remember that scene where Dwight tosses Lee the matchbook, it's a key scene though pretty pointless at the time.)
The rest of the movie is a wash, its a bunch of stuff you didn't have to see that didn't add up to anything. I guess it was character development but you don't really care about the characters one way or another.

I also found it very confusing. I'm glad it (the DVD) was a loaner and not a purchase.

Me too.
The plot seemed to be all over the place.

You have to read the book. There are multiple plot lines in the book which are touched on in the movie but not fully explained - I guess there's only so much you can cover in a couple of hours.