
Looks like a leprechaun, thinks like an Arab. Los Angeles 1948. Detective Sergeant Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall) probes into the savage murder of a young woman named Lois Fazenda found dumped in an empty lot. At the same time, he investigates a priest found dead in a whorehouse. Spellacy’s brother Monsignor Des (Robert De Niro), a Catholic priest, is meanwhile attempting to expand his church through businessman Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), a shady contractor whose favours he seeks at the behest of Cardinal Danaher (Cyril Cusack). While the two police cases and the real estate deal seem a world apart, Spellacy discovers an insidious connection involving money and power and the path always seems to lead back to the Church … We need more young pastors. Men who’ll do what they’re told. Adapted by John Gregory Dunne from his own novel with a draft by his wife Joan Didion, this utilises the Thirties Hollywood dyad of policeman/priest to prise apart the moral and actual violence that characterised Los Angeles in the years immediately following World War 2. That they’re brothers adds to the frisson of recognition that we’re back in the world of Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien and James Cagney. And the brothers are low-key individuals, with both Roberts turning in finely crafted, understated performances, irony writ large in who’s the more corrupt. This is studded with good performances, with Burgess Meredith very effective in the role of the priest who’s sacked for his incorruptibility. If the plot isn’t particularly well managed (with a lot of explanatory strands dropped from the source novel), it’s atmospheric and beautifully shot by the great Owen Roizman – the blood looks like blood, whether fresh, dried or caked on corpses and it ain’t pretty. Taking inspiration from the notorious real-life Black Dahlia murder it’s another gaze at the flipside of fame with the young victim a wannabe actress turned prostitute encountering the brutal sleaze that’s a world away from onscreen cinematic glory (supposedly). Scored by the great Georges Delerue who riffs on Carrickfergus to emphasise the Irish aspect of Catholicism, this is always a work of referentiality: the wedding scene at the Amsterdam estate nods to The Godfather; the mortuary scenes remind us of Chinatown, that other neo-noir; but it’s neither as deep nor as wide, it ploughs its own particular furrow about religion, depravity, loneliness and death. Directed by Ulu Grosbard whose wife Brenda Samuels plays the touching figure of Rose Gregorio. You’re my confessor in here but you wheel and deal out there, is that it?