When Brian De Palma is good, he is very good. And when he is bad, he is pretty damned awful. This slightly eccentric but brilliantly directed and shot thriller is a different matter altogether.

Taken from James Ellroy's novel about the grisly, unsolved murder of hopeful starlet Elizabeth Short in LA in 1947, it has Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart as two ex- boxer cops who are detailed to investigate the killing.

Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson) seems to be the girlfriend of both men by the time the film ends; Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) is the daughter of a rich property developer who knows more than she at first lets on.

With a cast like this, not much can go wrong, considering Josh Friedman's intelligent screenplay. But Swank does give Johansson a bit of an acting lesson - even though the latter looks so terrific that you don't notice at the time.

Hartnett and Eckhart are also good, though sometimes you wonder what a star like Robert Mitchum might have made of one or other of their parts. The bull point of the film, however, is not so much the cast as De Palma's sometimes odd but usually virtuoso telling of a story which has fascinated Angelinos for well over half a century.

This is the Forties and his and Ellroy's view of the decadence and corruption of the times reminds one forcibly of LA Confidential (Curtis Hanson's 1997 movie).

In truth, this is not such a complete film, but it is in the same vein and has even more notable moments of sheer directorial skill, such as the death plunge off high banisters, which could not better mimic Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

You'd never know it was made largely in Bulgaria, thanks to the cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond and production design by Dante Ferretti.

It looks great and, despite its over- melodramatic ending, remains one of the best thrillers of the year.