GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Steineded How sad is this?

Micransix Crappy film

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Benedito Dias Rodrigues True Confessions is a superior movie as Robert DeNiro on unusual role as a Monsignor with ambitious career on Catholic Church which is Cardinal's assessor where get involved with political matters of Church. Your old brother is a bad temper but honest cop they are friends until a corpse found cut on two parts appears on L.A. area which remember Black Dahlia real case.The movie is settled in 1948 and when the Duvall carefully investigating the case found some connections with your brother,so he has to decided what to do!!!Ulu Grosbard made important movies in your life and this picture is one of them and marvelous filmed and directed!!!

Movie Critic This movie seems like it is going to be great with De Niro as a busy young handsome competent monseigneur in 1947 LA....but it quickly deteriorates into skeleton scenes and irritating 40s detective style corny dialog--cynical one liners etc..(This kind of dialog needs to be delivered quick without blinking by the right actors Stanwyck or others and it works OK...not as done in this film.) Nothing fleshes the plot out with excitement or suspense--in fact what exactly is the plot? Is it a murder mystery? a tough detective story? an insider view of the church?? corrupt but basically good guy cops?? All these plot lines are fragmented and loose.Duval is frankly irritating in this movie and looks and acts so different from De Niro that it is jarring whenever he enters a scene as his brother.Where is the beef? It seems like there aren't enough people or large chunks of the story are missing. What is so captivating about a $5 hooker hotel?- What is the deal with the Chinese paying off the cops? why did the madam commit suicide or was she murdered?? Why did she spend time in the pen for Duval? None of it is tied together.You so hope that De Niro will get involved in an interesting story but there is no interesting story...there is a land developer who is corrupt but that is glossed over. A hooker/actress is killed and cut in two pieces but nothing much develops from that story. We find out De Niro gave her a ride in his car so that ruins his career...Why??You end up not caring about any of these characters and they seem cardboard and thin. Duval and his ugly side kick are repulsive to watch. Duval gets angry and throws some punches at the property developer...the oblique involvement of the Property Developer in the girls death (she is sliced in two) is vague and leads no where--apparently he didn't kill the hooker just introduced her to someone who probably did.DULL AND BORINGAVOID

tieman64 Based loosely on the famous Black Dahlia murder case, "True Confessions" revolves around two brothers, played by Robert Duvall (fresh off his great performance in "The Great Santini") and Robert De Niro (fresh off an equally great performance in "Raging Bull"), seeking atonement for their past sins.Set in Los Angeles during the late 1940s, De Niro plays an ambitious priest who spends the film establishing mutually beneficial relationships with corrupt clergymen, gangsters and construction moguls. Preaching the purity of the eternal soul whilst helping scoundrels hide their sins, De Niro is well aware of his hypocrisy, but deludes himself by maintaining that it's ultimately all for the greater good of the church.Tom, a local police detective, faces a similar dilemma. Himself touched by sin (he was once found guilty of police corruption), Tom becomes determined to solve the murder of a young girl who was found dumped in the Hollywood Hills. Solve the murder and absolve his sins, that's the way he sees it. And of course, his brother holds a vital piece of evidence. A piece of evidence which he must give up in order to redeem himself.There are a lot of interesting themes here – the links between business and religion, wounded souls searching for forgiveness, the tale of a city built on corruption, victim as sacrificial lamb, the way those in high places buy their angelic images through politics or church – but for the most part we've seen this stuff done better elsewhere."Godfather 3", for example, better dealt with the ties between Church and Mafia, "Bad Lieutenant" better dealt with a sin-stained Catholic seeking redemption by solving a crime and "Chinatown" is a both a better mystery and a better tale of a city founded on corruption. Of course today the gold standard for this sort of panoramic film-noir is the HBO series "The Wire", in which corruption is not only a way of life but a long accepted means of survival. In terms of shear scope, "The Wire" renders all these films outdated.But at the heart of "True Confessions" is the Black Dahlia murder and the romance and mystery it somehow still manages to exude. The most famous murder in Hollywood history, the crime has popped up in countless novels and films, the best being James Elroy's "Black Dahlia", partially about the murder of his own mother, and Brian De Palma's underrated adaptation of Elroy's novel.7.5/10 – Though a lesser film noir, the film works whenever De Niro and Duvall are together, and the cinematography by Owen Roizman has some appropriately atmospheric moments (he avoids golden-brown nostalgia and goes instead for sunlit sleaze). Worth one viewing.

JasparLamarCrabb TRUE CONFESSIONS tells the story of two brothers (a high ranking Catholic priest and an LA cop) and their twisted involvement in the infamous "Black Dahlia" murder case. It's a frank, sometimes brutal story of political corruption within city hall as well as within the Church. Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall are the brothers and though they don't look anything alike, they have similar temperaments and give excellent performances. The direction of Ulu Grosbard, a stage director making one of his rare forays into movie-making, is deliberate but never boring. The supporting cast consists of some of the very best character actors: Burgess Meredith as a vindictive priest, Kenneth McMillan, Charles Durning, and Ed Flanders. The excellent cinematography is by the legendary Owen Roizman and the haunting music score is by Georges Delerue. The chilly, sparse script is by the husband & wife team of John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion.