"The Black Dahlia" is a cure for insomnia

"They tell me I'm very photogenic," says Elizabeth Short, the infamously murdered Black Dahlia.

Photogenic, "The Black Dahlia," isn't. Ten minutes into the film, a man in the audience was already asleep, befuddled by all the confusing and unrelated plotlines that the scriptwriters seemed to enjoy throwing in and amazed that actors as talented as Scarlett Johannson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank could be so terrible. And the less said about Josh Hartnett and his suspenders the better.

"The Black Dahlia" is the story of Officer Bucky Bleichart (Hartnett) and his involvement in the uncovering of the murder of Elizabeth Short (played by an eerie Mia Kershner) in an infamous and real case that dubbed Short "The Black Dahlia." Hartnett seems to think that acting is just squinting. He squints all the time at everything and everyone in the entire movie. When angry—Hartnett squints. When sad—Hartnett squints. When expressing the greatest of all emotions, which is Love (or in his case, Lust)—Hartnett squints.

And his more-famous and more-talented co-stars aren't much better. Aaron Eckhart, Hartnett's partner, seems to be suffering from a bad case of Horrible Script. His character, Lee Blanchard, goes completely insane about a quarter of the way into the movie, and the scriptwriters didn't really feel that they needed to provide a satisfactory reason as to why he flips out. Scarlett Johansson, as Blanchard's girlfriend, Bleichart's love interest, and an ex-prostitute, is only in the movie to provide a simper to Hartnett's squint, flouncing around uselessly in ugly sweaters and bright-red lipstick. And Hilary Swank—what the heck is she doing in this movie? Her character is the one that makes the least amount of sense, and she's up against some pretty stiff competition.

Swank plays Madeline Linscott, a sort of wannabe Lauren Bacall if Lauren Bacall decided to put on an ambiguous and inconsistent European accent and became flippantly bisexual. It's hard to picture the elegant and black-garbed Swank as the same woman who was muscular boxing champion not two years ago, though her turn as Linscott is reminiscent of her part in "Boys Don't Cry."

In a movie that features a woman who has been horribly mutilated, it is expected that there is going to be a great deal of violence. Even so, the writers seem to have gone a bit over the top on this one. Not only is someone cut in half, but another person's head is bashed in on a fountain and a little girl is shown dead, with a bullet hole through her forehead. It's probably good enough to bring in the testosterone-crazed male audiences, but anyone who doesn't like seeing someone's mouth sliced from ear to ear should probably stay away from this one.

But the worst part—worse than the acting or the violence or the sexuality—is the plot. It is as though there was some sort of epic battle going on behind the scenes between the scriptwriters: one wanting to make it a romance, the other an action-drama, another a suspense. Because of all these conflicting plotlines, the movie ends up making no sense whatsoever. Watching it is like reading a Russian novel: The viewer finds his or herself compelled to take notes as they go along, just so they can remember exactly what is happening or who this minor character that suddenly became so important is.

Another side affect of the Scriptwriter Feud Syndrome is that it seems that the scriptwriters got really lazy. Bleichart begins to make leaps of understanding that Einstein couldn't achieve, let alone Josh Hartnett. The romance scenes (there are many of them) seem as though the writers just did a copy/paste and replaced Hilary Swank with Scarlett Johannson. And the sheer number of plotlines that are introduced and then abruptly abandoned leave the mind whirling in confusion.

So, most of the way through the film, that man is still asleep, snores echoing through the auditorium, and it's obvious that the audience envies him. To fall asleep and miss having a headache would be a blessing. But skip that step—do not go and see "The Black Dahlia" in the first place. And maybe, sometime in the near future, the scriptwriters will declare a truce to their battle and start turning out coherent movies.

"The Black Dahlia" (121 minutes) is a wide-release and is rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, sexuality and language.