Brown's Requiem (1998)
Fritz Brown is an ex-LAPD, recovering alcoholic who now splits his time repossessing cars for a used car lot and staffing his one-man private detective agency. When a filthy caddie named Freddy "Fat Dog" Baker wanders into Fritz's office one day, flashing a wad of cash, Fritz is hired to follow Fat Dog's kid sister Jane, who is holed up with a Beverly Hills sugar daddy named Sol Kupferman. Kupferman is a 70 year-old bag man for the mob, and Fat Dog claims that "Solly K" is up to something evil that may harm Jane. The trail leads Fritz to an encounter with his dark past in the person of Haywood Cathcart, current head of LAPD internal affairs and the person who kicked Fritz off the police force.
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How sad is this?
Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Beats me how people can describe this adolescent exercise as film noir. True there's a gun & a bottle & a dame & the lead is a private eye, but that ain't what makes the genre, folks. This thing plays like reheated TV cop show stuff - lots of bloody beating & lousy continuity - with a dash of Chinatown memories thrown in. Pretty hard to watch beyond the first 10 minutes. You want contemporary feel, watch anything by John Dahl.
Warning: SPOILERS! I'm suprised no one else seems to have noticed the Chinatown homage this movie does. Kudos to Michael Rooker I'd like to see him in more lead roles. I also liked the irony of Fatdog being both a big fan of Hitler and unknowingly being the son of a Jew. This is just what you want from a small film. A modest production yielding good, but modest, results.
Really really a good film. I loved the gutsy choices this director made. This is a movie no one should miss. I'm a big fan of James Ellroy and truly believe that Jason Freeland's filmic rendition of this novel is fabulous. If you loved LA Confidential, you'll love this movie.
First I want to say that I love James Ellroy. You will certainly find L.A. Confidential in my top 10 for best movies of the 90's.So I really looked forward to this movie, but it really disappointed me. The story concentrates the most on the main character, here played by a decent B-movie actor: Michael Rooker. Unfortunately, he just can't handle with his personage. The film could have greater, with a lesser depressing tone, a bit more tempo and a better written adaptation. The actual crime story is hard to follow and is told here on a very uninteresting way.I saw this in the movie theatre, but I think this should have been going directly on video. I can almost certainly say that almost every Ellroy fan will be disappointed. A shame, a pity, just forget about it...hopefully the next Ellroy film will be better. The first thing I wanted to do after seeing this film, was watching L.A. Confidential again...