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While his pen is black, with saturated colors his ink depicts a universe that is both murky and glamorous, where corruption, murders, sex and dollars are the cogs in the wheel of an attractive and dangerous city, a kind of urban femme fatale. After the luxurious L.A. Confidential and the B series Dark Blue comes the adaptation of his best-seller, The Black Dahlia, a work based on the sadistic and mysterious murder of a starlet who came to seek fortune and fame in Hollywood-a news story whose importance in the work — and life — of the writer makes much more sense once one knows that Ellroy's mother met a similarly tragic fate. While some names were essential for adapting a project that's both visually and narratively ambitious — one notably thinks of Michael Mann and Ridley Scott for their "dark" vision of Los Angeles — this task falls to Brian de Palma, a just as suitable choice given the filmmaker's penchant for tortuous stories, icy visuals and a logical continuation, just precisely after the film noire style of Femme Fatale. And precisely where issue is — thematically at least — is that The Black Dahlia is affected by a certain redundancy, built around the emblematic figure of the femme fatale, already fully studied in his previous eponymous work. With De Palma woman is not only a strong creature — both physically and mentally — but also a predator, and from Dressed to Kill to Carrie to these last two films, De Palma seems to want to confirm an idea that his audience has already assimilated for the last thirty years. De Palma proclaims this fascination for woman, beautiful and fatale by means of one of his usual processes, image. Subjugated by films of the enticing Dahlia, the cop character — accurately played by Josh Harnett despite what some close-minded critics might think — is nothing other than a reflection of the director. An unfolding of the character who associates with a third dimension, when one knows that Harnett also plays Ellroy in his search to discover his mother's murderer. The other reference points of De Palma's universe are his visual side, his dexterity — in particular the scenes where the body is discovered and the staircase scene, his homage to Hitchcock with a sexy Scarlett Johansson at the top of the staircase contrasting with the threatening presence of transvestite Norman Bates disguised in Psycho — along with his taste for pornography and voyeurism. There where De Palma perhaps goes a bit too far, with the risk of alienating a part of his audience, is in the over-the-top final scene which refers to the classic cinema trash of Mommy Dearest. Here De Palma seems to be a too sophisticated choice for an already complex story like Black Dahlia, and one would have preferred a more formal De Palma like in Carlito's Way rather than Femme Fatale to pay proper tribute to this precious Dahlia.
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