Victory Motel Shootout (L.A. Confidential)

Victory Motel Shootout (L.A. Confidential)

by Michael Woolston, Isabella Healy, Robert Newman and Sean Fitz-Gerald

In L.A. Confidential’s Victory Motel Shootout scene, elements and functions of visual design crop up as a result of high-stakes action and foreshadowing. The finale scene features light coming from practical sources, such as the headlights of cars parked outside the motel room. The room Bud (Russell Crowe) and Edmund (Guy Pearce) occupy is dark to start, but natural light pouring in through open blinds gives the uncanny feeling that the room will slowly become more revealing and function as less of a bunker.

Every ensuing gunshot serves as a mechanical special effect, ripping through the walls of the room and allowing the light to flood the room. The incoming light produces a Swiss-cheese effect that ultimately illuminates and subverts Bud and Edmund’s cover.

The light appears to come from one direction and one group of cars, becoming fuller and fuller after more gunshots pierce the walls. Bud and Edmund’s shadows—as well as those of the other gunmen in the scene—are depicted realistically, with a mix of light and shade, to add suspense. Will they make it out or will they get clipped? Those who are struck by bullets wear squibs that burst upon impact, giving the raw feeling of an intense, fatal shootout.

Additionally, subtler aspects of the visual design contribute to the high-stakes atmosphere of the finale: the walls and cars are the same color, producing an eerie osmotic effect; many pieces of furniture and other fixtures, from the blinds to the floorboards to the windows, have strong horizontal lines, which—according to Prof. Casper—represent a state of calmness (in this case, a calm that is about to be disrupted); and many of the intruding gunmen don hats, a slight touch that identifies them as a threat and sets them apart from Bud and Edmund.

The convergence of the above facets lends the finale its do-or-die, high-stakes atmosphere—making it one of the film’s single most important and well-done scenes.

Scene link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjFIi3PC2cI