“The Black Dahlia” finds legendary filmmaker Brian DePalma (“Carrie,” “Scarface,” “Carlito’s Way,” “Mission: Impossible”) clicking on every single one of his visually audacious cylinders. Unfortunately for us, they just don’t happen to be clicking all at the same time. This lurid piece of pulp melodramatic noir is all over the map, flashes of brilliance undercut by moments of ineptitude with all of it finally shattering to pieces thanks to a final leaving viewers scratching their collective heads.

I’ll certainly say one thing; this just might be the single most beautiful looking film I’ve seen all year. Not that this should come as a surprise. DePalma has always had a knack for cinematic poetry, this one being no exception. If anything cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“Melinda and Melinda”) and production designer Dante Ferretti (“The Aviator”) have completely outdone themselves. The world of 1940’s Los Angeles has never looked so oppressively opulent and seductively dingy. DePalma and company weave a web of smoke, skin and mirrors, all of it drifting in and out of focus to the haunting strains of Mark Isham’s (“Fargo”) lyrically hypnotic score.

If only that were enough. Based on James Ellroy’s best seller and working from a half-baked screenplay by Josh Friedman, “The Black Dahlia” only proves how much of a fluke Curtis Hanson’s “L.A. Confidential” was. While both are based on books by the same acclaimed author, that previous Oscar-winner got the look, feel and cadences of hard-boiled noir just about spot-on. From performances to direction the whole thing sizzled like a choice ten ounce steak sitting on the barbecue, its blood red juices dripping down the meaty dramatic surface like inspiration bursting forth from the mind of a Nobel Prize-winning scholar.

DePalm’s movie doesn’t flow remotely like Hanson’s did. The director is more interested in seeing how many outrageously dazzling tricks he can pull off with his camera than he is in constructing a coherent or plausible storyline. He purports to tell the tale of the famously unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), a wannabe actress dubbed The Black Dahlia after her body is found severed in two and her face hideously disfigured. Leading the charge to find her killer are two pugilist policemen, Det. Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Sgt. Leland “Lee” Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), each with secrets tying them to the case far more intimately than is good for them.

In a way my reaction to all of this is kind of odd. This should work, DePalma already proving his broadly lush operatic style could by applied to this type of crime genre with his classic adaptation of “The Untouchables.” But the filmmaker forces his cast to act in an overly theatric style that rarely manages to not call attention to itself. Eckhart and Hartnett survive this to a point (although the latter really should stop playing characters like this one – it’s getting tiresome), while costars Scarlett Johansson and two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank look lost and completely out of place. Only Kirshner comes out completely unscathed, the winsome beauty of “Exotica” showcasing touching bits and pieces of a fading humanity impossible not to be moved by.

But “The Black Dahlia” is impossible to dismiss. From a crazy-good dinner party between Bliechert and the ultra-rich Linscott family (Swank, John Kavanagh, Fiona Shaw and Rachel Miner), to a signature surrealistic stairway chase resulting in a face-first brain splattering atop a cascading fountain, the tricks up DePalma’s sleeves are as good as he’s ever unleashed. There is no way a person comes out of this thing at least not partially impressed, too many moments of brilliant chutzpa to feel otherwise.

Yet no amount of razzle-dazzle can change the fact this movie ends up being nothing more than an opulently sensational lackluster disaster filled with far more questions than answers. Why have Swank and Kirshner play lookalikes and than have them look nothing alike? Is Eckhart’s character a crooked cop out for himself or cop gone crooked looking to help the ones he loves? Does Bleichert choose to ignore evidence because he’s afraid of the truth or does he honestly just not notice the answers to his questions are literally staring him straight in the face?

These questions and many more hover over “The Black Dahlia” like a hangmen’s noose just waiting for the floorboards to give so it can tighten its deadly necktie. That hoped for drop comes in the form of a conclusion that steals liberally from “Chinatown” and sets it in a campy atmosphere more suited to “Saturday Night Live.” Frankly, this solution to the fabled unsolved killing feels rushed and tacked on, and even worse than all of that for all of the director’s slight of hand it also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. 

I want to say this doesn’t bother me, that DePalma’s genius for visual trickery is more than enough to make this expressive murder mystery worthwhile. But I can’t, not even knowing how badly I really want to. As much as I admire the director there is no justice in giving his movie a pass just because it looks spectacular. The real Elizabeth Short never found any for the crimes committed against her, why should “The Black Dahlia” fair any different?