I like the genre. I understood the story. I am familiar with James Ellroys' work. I like most of the actors, I saw it at the theater when it came out with great expectation. It put my ass to sleep. I waited a while and rented the dvd..alas. I saw it listed on cable and tried again, STILL wanting desperately to connect..Sigh. Aside from Scarlett who was magnificent in 50's costuming, the whole thing is a mess to me. Seems as though the only cinematic nod to film noir was to make everyone wear a hat and chain smoke non-filter cigarettes. Jeez. It gets a 5 from me and not for LACK OF TRYING!

Well.comparing the Karate kid and TBD seems very random and nonsensical,since they have exactly NOTHING in common,from genre to when they were made to directors or the time period they are placed in. Neithr is the rating like comparing a 5.2 to a 7.6.
But acting? Which film was Oscarnominated of these two for best Supporting actor? That is correct,The karate kid.
The black Dahlia got a nom for cinematography and deservedly so,I would also have supported an art direction nombut that is ALL it has going for it.
Eckhart embarrasses himself here,he sure as hell isnt helped by the script who just turns him into a teeth-grinding,very agressive junkie in 4 seconds. His arc is so pointless and convoluted and since it ties in with the rest of the story,by the time we get to sum things up,the whole story becomes even way more convoluted(And amazingly,since so repetitive,a plot for simpletons) then it is at this point.
Cause that is what this is;A hollow,goodlooking,derivative,very poor attempt at film noir. So much exposition,every scene,every name will mean something,from Eckharts openng random shooting of a thug;it was so painfully obvious.
There is nothing special"to understand." WHY would Hilary Swank even be in this picture if not to have the role she has? This is of course underscored and made too abbundantly clear from the amount of time we spend with this rich,eccentric family. There are NO other suspects.
Dinner after dinner,scene after scene,we just wait for" the revelation",since this basically is the story and no red herring. When mommy goes nuts and explains certain things,while its not helped by Fionas extreme overacting,the explanation for certain elements of the story is so farfetched and convoluted,it doesnt even seem to make sense to her crazy character.
Hartnett,bland,harmless and wannabe noir,Swank as a femme fatale but she looks like the mix of a cute horse and Courtney Cox. Johansson,as so often,just doesnt fit,seeming out of place,readings sound like she gets the dialog through a ear-mic and belonging in another century and film.
Mia Kirshner and John Kavanagh were the only good ones here- Great shame on DePalma for this one and I can Not understand how James Ellroy liked this interpretation of his book but shunned the supremely more ambigous,tenser and better acted(Russell,Gleeson,Rhames) Dark Blue by Ron Shelton. 3.5 for this superficial,messy film that lacks direction,conviction and discipline.
So you understand movies,ey and if one does not like this one,it means one does not understand it? Awesome mentality there.

I can believe the rating. The movie is firmly mediocre, so 5-6 seems right for that.
Comparing this with the Karate Kid is also ill-advised. KK stacks up as a solid kid's film even today. BD is pretty weak compared to other noir/mystery films. BD might be shot better than KK and have a better cast, but the result is what matters - and the result is that KK has become iconic and beloved, whereas I'll bet most people who saw BD can't remember much of it.

The acting is awful

THANK YOU !!!!
the more things change the more they stay the same

This message has been deleted.

I'm Sorry but this is not a good movie. Film Noir is about mystery/suspense and subtlety (at least the best ones) and actually trying to figure out what happened withoug ever knowing all the answers or what will happen. ScarJo having her former boyfriend's initials literally carved into her? C'mon. Does this mean in the Chinatown remake (god forbid) Evelyn Mulray will have an "I love my Daddy" Tattoo. There was nothing for the viewer to figure out.everything was explained with some form of literal exposition (the viewer at the end being told what actually happened by the mother as opposed to Nicholson slowly figuring out (and the viewer) what happened while he is slapping Faye Dunaway), ironic consdering that the case which this based upon was never actually solved.
To each his own but I just watched this moview for first time and wrote another post where I stated DePalma made a deliberate parody of film noir, the torture porn genre and the hollywood establishement.

I don't understand the negativity for
The Black Dahlia
. Although certain parts of the storyline were predictable overall it is full of intriguing elements. Murder, deceit and manipulation made
The Black Dahlia
a great film to watch as we got a view of a fascinating dark world.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".

Look, I don't even like Karate Kid but I still think it's better than this.
Who busts the Crimebusters?

The film is lucky I liked the look of it. The film is garbage.
Clark's destiny =
Superman
,
Lex Luthor
&
Lois Lane
.

Watch the movie again from the start,its actually quite good

Just watching this on tv now for the first time and I think the current rating (5.6) is "lowish," but about right. No more than a 6 for sure. And I came to IMDb expecting to see an over-rating in the 7-8 range.
I like the female talent in the film, but the male leads are totally wrong. And it doesn't really work for me as a film moir. It has all the noir conventions, but doesn't feel real, authentic; call it an imitation noir, or a "faux-noir."
I read the book a few years ago and loved it. By comparisoin, the movie seems almost incomprehensible. Mind you i missed the first half-hour, and kept wondering would it have made more sense had I seen it from the start.
My rating - 5/10.

my thoughts are around the middle of everything.It was noir,but not the best of noir.It had a simple twist,but the plot was okay.The cinematography was okay.Acting was okay.Pretty much everything was okay,and that means a 6/10 for me.
It is kind of low though,considering my rates are usually lower than the movie's average rating.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=43001664

This was the least enjoyable movie I have ever seen.

Please. This is De Palma trying to film Chinatown + LA Confidential at the same time and failing badly.
It's not Noir - it's a parody of Noir. Cinematography? The movie could have been filmed by Michelangelo using a camera built by Jesus and it still would have a badly executed story using awkward actors and edited by a person who never read the source material.
You know a movie is a failure when the plot "twist" is simply, "The person who did it is the least likely person in the movie to have done it. We have illustrated this point by giving that person almost no character development at all and less than two minutes of screen time. You watched two hours of a movie and were left with absolutely no catharsis or resolution at all."
Carlito's Way is the last genuine De Palma movie to have been made. Everything since has been either painful, laughable or boring.
www.pantheonoutcast.com

Yeah, 5.5 is too high. A convoluted, laughable, turgid mess of a movie with a confused plot, hammy and wooden acting, ridiculous melodrama and full of simply bad storytelling. It seems to be aiming to be a serious modern noir like
LA Confidential
or
China Town
but has all the subtlety of
Sin City
, with little of the entertainment value (intentional entertainment value anyway).

"I watch them for the plot."
Well, there's one problem.

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i would have rated it a 5, i would give it a 6 though because of the great cast so 5.5 sounds about right..

super_frog16 I'm sorry, but you're just another person who didn't understand the film.. and then rated it low because of your incapability to comprehend this artwork of a movie!
I understood it first time around, and loved it!

Have to agree with the OP about one thingI thought the 5.5 rating was odd, but only because I thought it would have been a lot lower. This is possibly the worst film I have ever seen. I agree the camera work and such was good, but I don't watch films for the camera work, I watch them for the plot. And this movie does not have the slightest hint of a plot! I have no idea what the hell is going on half the time and the other half I was sat wondering why I was watching it.
The dialogue is odd, the scenes jump around all over the place. There's a million characters added which have a minute screen time each, but the names of which we're expected to remember during scenes where somethings happened concerning several of these said characters.
I was watching with two friends and at the end we all said 'what the hell'. Seriously no idea what went on in this film. I have no idea why they burnt the leads partner, nor why there was money under scarlette johansens floor, or why he was digging up the floor in the first place. No idea why said lead punched his partner in the face in that random scene either. Or what the significance of the clown painting was. Don't see the point in that side story of the cowboy manAnd the last half an hour of the film was laughable. Anticlimactic to the maxI could sit and mention a lot of the things I just didn't get. And I'm not a stupid person before someone gets on the defensive and calls me such, I just didn't understand this film at all.
Personal preference, i'm not going to impress my opinion on anyone.
'
The voice says i'm almost out of minutes
'
proud saltgunner!

And about noir films..
How many Films Noir have you actually seen? Because with what follows it reads like you have only seen 'Sin City' and think it is the elephant's ear's of Noir
this is far from being in that league, not for not be a noir film, but for being in some points CHILDISH in his plot.
This is nowhere near the best Noir, I'll give you that, as I'd not think of comparing it to films like 'The Maltese Falcon', 'Out of The Past', 'The Glass Key', 'Double Indemnity', 'White Heat', 'The Big Combo' et cetera. I wouldn't say the plot of this film was childish (it was largely from Elroy's novel after all) but it was a bit too unfocused (though not confusing).
The first you have to get in a film noir is a huge villain
Although Sydney Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman (a figurative and literal "huge villain") was one of the best villains in Film Noir, many (if not most) lack a "huge villain". Where were the huge villains in 'In A Lonely Place', 'D.O.A' or 'Blue Dahlia'? In these films the villain was low key and revealed late.
(those who kill, stink, say bad words, hairy balls, and slap their girlfriends, who then help the good guy cos they say they made a mistake, and fall in love for him for being soo good)
Ah yes, a pattern followed by only a few Films Noir and in some of those aspects only by films that are post-Classic Noir; how many 1940s films have you seen with "bad words"? You'd also more often have a woman pretend to (or fall in love with the hero only to turn out to be a villain. I also can't remember many "hairy balls" in them. The closest think of one film 'The Big Combo' which roughly corresponds to your view of a Noir sans the villain saying "bad words" all the time Mr. Brown was quite cultured.
Here, the villain is..dont know who..the old crazy wife?..the old husband? their retarded son who wanted to have sex with the victim?..WHO??
Yeah I guess it is like in films like 'The Maltese Falcon' which doesn't have one victim or 'Farewell My Lovely' The fact Noir often has multiple villains and even victims could be villains and vice versa. Films Noir are iconic for not being morally black and white, in the same way monochrome is not, the morality is shades of grey and black. It is ambiguous.
This film may have failed as a film and as a Noir but not for the reasons you have stated.
"The game's afoot!"

Let's face the facts.. The acting in Karate Kid is not good. Come on.. Don't even try it.
I was not reffering to holes in the story. Instead I was looking at the story as a whole: It's the typical hollywood recipe.
The cinematography is just random and bland.
now
The acting in the Black Dahlia was amazing, and thoroughly convincing.
The plot/story was also great, thrilling.. Keeps you on your toes.. It maintains (for me) a nice suspense all the way through.
The dialogue was great.
Just the opening line of it was memorable:
"Mr. Fire versus Mr. Ice. For everything people were making it out to be, you'd think it was our first fight. It wasn't. And it wouldn't be our last."
Noir genre/style, it certianly is within the style.

Ok, just to take a completely random example..
take Karate Kid It has a rating of 6.8 out of 10. ???
Have you seen the acting in Karate Kid?
Have you carefully evaluated the plot/story?
Have you even looked at the cinematography?
Morita was bad actor? He was quite funny, and had a good mix of cinism and black humor, along with the hearted and respected master.
Karate Kid has no plot holes.
The cinematography is bad? or is just average? Or what? Dont see your point here.
Now I want you to take a look at The Black Dahlia
Great acting!! (Heavy emphasis on the exclamation marks!)
Great plot/story!
Great cinematography!
Great dialogue!
Great acting?could be
Grat plot??? WHAT???? Get serious please!!
Grat cinematography..that could be
Great dialogue?.? really?.dont remember any memorable dialogue
And about noir films..this is far from being in that league, not for not be a noir film, but for being in some points CHILDISH in his plot.The first you have to get in a film noir is a huge villain (those who kill, stink, say bad words, hairy balls, and slap their girlfriends, who then help the good guy cos they say they made a mistake, and fall in love for him for being soo good)
Here, the villain is..dont know who..the old crazy wife?..the old husband? their retarded son who wanted to have sex with the victim?..WHO??