For a director who made a movie called Femme Fatale, Brian De Palma sure has a tough time negotiating the film-noir genre. Many of De Palma’s pictures could be called noirs, but none are as steeped in the tradition of hard-bitten detectives, double-crossing dames and thick mysteries as The Black Dahlia, based on James Ellroy’s novel. It’s the tangled novel that proves to be the problem, though; there’s just too much going on, especially for a single-minded obsessive like De Palma. With Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart playing ‘noir’ the way little kids play house.
