L.A. Confidential is a 1997 feature film based on the 1990 crime fiction novel of the same title by James Ellroy, the third in his L.A. Quartet novel cycle. Both book and film tell the story of Los Angeles police in the 1950s, and police corruption bumping up against Hollywood celebrity.

The film adaptation was directed and cowritten by Curtis Hanson, with an ensemble cast.

The story is about policemen in 1953 who are caught up in a mixture of lies, sex, corruption and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story eventually stretches to encompass organized crime, political corruption, heroin, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism, plastic surgery and Hollywood. The novel's title refers to the infamous 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed fictionally therein as Hush-Hush.

Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is a slick and likable Hollywood cop who moonlights as the technical advisor of Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-like television show. Vincennes is connected with Hush-Hush magazine: he receives hefty payoffs for making orchestrated celebrity arrests, often involving narcotics, that will attract even more readers to the magazine - and more fame to himself.

Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce), the son of a legendary LAPD cop, is a brilliant detective determined to outdo his father. Ed's intelligence, his education, his glasses, his insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor all contribute to Ed's social isolation from other officers. He increases the resentment of other police against him by testifying against other cops in a police brutality case (a fictional version of the Bloody Christmas incident) early in the novel.

Wendell "Bud" White (Russell Crowe), the most feared man in the LAPD, is a six-foot tall muscleman. His partner was convicted and expelled from the police force in the "Bloody Christmas" scandal by Exley's testimony, and Bud vows revenge. His ties to the Nite Owl case become personal when his partner is one of the victims among the massacre. He has a violent obsession with men who abuse women, counterbalanced by his tenderness towards the victims. His temper often overpowers his thought.

At different intervals, the three men begin to investigate the Nite Owl case that starts revealing deep tales of corruption within their own precinct. Capt. Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) takes young Bud White under his wing and tries to show him the ropes of being a cop while Bud develops a relationship with a prostitute that might be a crucial turning point to the case Edmund is investigating.

Helgeland and Hanson were forced to make major changes to the plot to pare the story down to feature-length. Those sections notably missing or shortened are:

Bud's subplot involving a serial killer who murders prostitutes.
Ed's father.
Inez Soto's subplot.
the Dieterling (Disney) subplot.
nearly all of Jack's back story and his marriage.
Bud's partner loses his job and pension and is killed at the Nite Owl in the film but is not imprisoned.
In Ed's back story, the role of his brother is replaced with an anecdote about his father, whose murder by an unknown criminal Ed dubbed Rollo Tomasi inspired his police career. Also, Ed is a medal winning veteran of World War II from the Pacific Theater which events he flashbacks to during the Bloody Christmas riot.

Author James Ellroy expressed his satisfaction with the finished result on the DVD extra features.