Hollywood Confidential
The entire line of action centers on the agency and its investigations into particular situations that are either unlawful or otherwise embarrassing for their Tinsel town celebrity clients. First there is the narrator who talks into a portable tape recorder as he follows up surveillance on an acting coach who's involved with drugs and drug dealers. Then there is Charlize Theron as Sally who is posing as a waitress in a swanky upscale disco to investigate why the club is losing money. Then there is Stan Navarro (Edward James Olmos) who is being hired by the manager of a hot film director to buy off the young woman the director has seduced an impregnated. Everyone has a sordid back story and the film goes into the mind of some of the characters to show us an event that has affected the makeup of the character. For Navarro this event is his involvement in arresting a young man who has abused his wife and young daughter but has been kept out of jail by the FBI, and DEA because the prep has valuable information on a big drug dealer, but the criminal returns home to kill his wife and child. For another character Teresa (Angela Alvarado), a new addition to the agency the past has left her scarred because as a uniformed cop she wasn't able to take action when someone shoots her partner. The key issue is whether Stan Navarro can follow through on his assignment to dissuade the young woman from contacting the hot director who is up for a big award thus insuring his salability. Along the way some of the agents get beat up and hospitalized, some suffer psychic bombardment from past internalized events, and some openly confront with other agents their personal reasons for continuing in this less-than-honorable profession.