The second of James Ellroy's LA quartet to reach the screen (a third, White Jazz, is in pre-production starring George Clooney) had a very mixed reaction.

The problems lie in three main areas: there's way too much plot squeezed into a running time a lot shorter than the miraculously realised LA Confidential and trying to follow it all is pretty confusing - David Fincher planned a three-hour version in noirish mono.

Secondly, the film's star, Josh "Pearl Harbor" Hartnett is hardly in the league of Confidential's Russell Crowe and Kevin Spacey and, like female lead Scarlett Johansson, seems far too young to convince as a world-weary Ellroy character.

And thirdly, the denouement is more like 70s parody Murder By Death than authentic Ellrovian hard-bitten dialogue. All of this is a shame as I had plenty of company in looking forward to a perfect match of author and director: Brian De Palma's obsessions (murder, sex and corruption) match Ellroy's to a large extent and even his recent straight-to-video fare such as Femme Fatale had memorable bravura touches.

Here the occasional long tracking shot and some elaborate art deco styling just can't make up for glaring errors at the centre of the drama.