True Confessions (1981)

Released in 1981 through United Artists and produced by Winkler Films, True Confessions is a crime drama set against the morally compromised landscape of post-war Los Angeles. The film draws its story from John Gregory Dunne's 1977 novel of the same name, with Dunne himself co-writing the screenplay alongside Joan Didion. That source material carries real literary weight: Dunne's novel was itself loosely inspired by the infamous Black Dahlia murder case of 1947, one of the most notorious unsolved killings in American history. The film transplants that atmosphere of institutional rot and buried sin into a story about two brothers, one a detective, one a Catholic priest, whose professional worlds collide over the brutal murder of a young woman. It is the kind of story that is less interested in whodunit mechanics and more concerned with what such an investigation reveals about the people doing the investigating.

Director Ulu Grosbard was never a household name, but he had form with character-driven, performance-led material, having previously directed films like Straight Time (1978), which also starred Dustin Hoffman in a quietly unsettling crime role. True Confessions sits comfortably in that same register: unhurried, atmospheric, and reliant on its actors to do the heavy lifting. The production leans into the period with care, recreating a 1940s Los Angeles that feels lived-in rather than glossy, all neon-lit confessionals and smoke-stained back offices. The supporting cast around the two leads is notably strong, with Charles Durning, Kenneth McMillan, and Ed Flanders all contributing to a world that feels populated rather than merely decorated.

The two leads, of course, are the main draw. Robert De Niro, who had by this point already accumulated a remarkable run of work through the late 1970s and early 1980s (you can read thoughts on another of his films from this period in the review of The King of Comedy), plays the priest with a particular kind of contained ambition, a man comfortable in the corridors of ecclesiastical power. Robert Duvall, one of American cinema's most consistently underrated performers, plays his detective brother with the world-weary bluntness the role demands. The two men share an easy, credible chemistry that suggests a lifetime of complicated history, which is more or less exactly what the film needs them to project. Whether the film makes full use of what they bring is, of course, another question entirely. And if you are curious how De Niro fares in a rather different kind of crime story, the review of The Untouchables makes for an interesting comparison.

True Confessions feels like a crime drama that got lost in the ‘80s and only just clawed its way out. De Niro and Duvall do their usual men-of-few-words-but-many-secrets thing, which is solid, if not exactly groundbreaking. The setup’s promising (a priest (De Niro) investigates a murder linked to his Cop brother (Duvall) but the film never quite shakes the feeling that it’s retreading ground already nailed by better movies (Chinatown, The Godfather, take your pick). The plot hinges on corruption, guilt, and the kind of twist that makes you shrug rather than gasp. There’s a grimy L.A. vibe that works, and the brothers’ dynamic has weight, but the script leans too hard on noir clichés: shadowy backroom deals, femme fatales with hearts of… well, still mostly stone, and a finale that fizzles instead of explodes. Cinematography’s moody, the score’s serviceable, and the church they film in is Familiar. Shoutout to the Kill Bill fans who’ll squint and go, “Wait, isn’t that the…?” Yep, same dusty chapel, decades before the Bride sliced her way through it.

And that, for me, is probably the most honest way to sum it up: True Confessions is a film you respect more than you enjoy. The pieces are all there, the performances, the period detail, the moral architecture, but they never quite assemble into something that lingers the way the best crime dramas do. If you want to see what a film in this neighbourhood looks like when it fully commits, Little Caesar is worth your time for the contrast, and for anyone interested in how the crime drama has evolved across different cultures and eras, my review of A Bittersweet Life touches on some of the same themes with considerably more zip. True Confessions is polished but unremarkable, the cinematic equivalent of a sermon that makes all the right points and still somehow loses the room.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1981  | Watched: 2025-06-22

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Robert De Niro: The Untouchables (1987) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Shark Tale (2004) · Little Fockers (2010)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)