The picture is a kind of fattened goose that's been stuffed with goose-liver pâté. It's overrich and fundamentally unsatisfying.

This is far from one of the director's better efforts and should be avoided by all those who are not sworn De Palma boosters. full review

Dahlia seethes with atmosphere, and Hollywood's underbelly is always worth an ogle. full review

Mr. De Palma and his collaborators have been unable to translate Mr. Ellroy's depth of feeling into cinematic equivalents. full review

There are moments when The Black Dahlia projects a spectral world, but its ghosts in broad daylight are elusive at best. full review

The Black Dahlia feels wobbly and uncertain. full review

Despite genius-level contributions from cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and art director Dante Ferretti, the handsome film is almost abusively murky, trafficking in difficult-to-follow plot manipulations, arbitrary twists and mumbled dialogue. full review

In The Black Dahlia, narrative strands tangle and wither, and minor characters clutter the plot. full review

What it accomplishes with its stunning cinematography and set design is undercut by a lack of coherence. full review

Black Dahlia wilts from a surfeit of incident and a shortage of credibility, owing to a script by Josh Friedman that eventually turns to soap and performances that approach the hilarity of a Guy Maddin melodrama. full review

Despite some amusing distractions, watching the big picture coalesce is not unlike watching someone complete a jigsaw puzzle. It all comes together eventually, but you already saw the image on the box. full review

De Palma throws everything at the screen, but almost nothing sticks.

Josh Friedman's screenplay doesn't so much distill the flavor of James Ellroy's hard-boiled writing as serve up indigestible chunks of verbiage.

The Black Dahlia is a NASCAR race all but ended by a spectacular wreck on the next-to-last lap. full review

A wrongheaded collaboration between two opposites that has too little of James Ellroy's mad passion and too much of Brian De Palma's irresponsible style. full review

Brian De Palma drains the life out of James Ellroy's take on the spectacularly cruel 1947 murder of a young Los Angeles woman known as the Black Dahlia.

Visually dazzling but ultimately disappointing.

The convoluted plot would be exhausting even if it were believable. It isn't. full review

With the exception of Aaron Eckhart, De Palma's actors can't live up to the period or the atmosphere. full review