L.A. Confidential
Bud White: "Merry Christmas."
Lynn Bracken: "Merry Christmas to you, officer."
Bud White: "That obvious, huh?"
Lynn Bracken: "It's practically stamped on your forehead."
Lynn Bracken: "You're the first man in five years who didn't tell me I look like Veronica Lake inside of a minute."
Bud White: "You look better than Veronica Lake."
Bud White: "I'd like to see you again."
Lynn Bracken: "Are you asking me for a date, or an appointment?"
Bud White: "...I don't know."
Lynn Bracken: "Well, if you're asking me for a date, I should know your first name."
Bud White: (embarrassed) " Forget I asked. It was a mistake."
Lynn Bracken: "I was wondering when you'd knock on my door again, Officer White."
Bud White: "It's Bud."
Lynn Bracken: "Bud..."
Lynn Bracken: "I see Bud because I want to. I see Bud because he can't hide the good inside of him. I see Bud because he treats me like Lynn Bracken and not some Veronica Lake look-alike who fucks for money."
(Bud White catches a parolee beating his wife)
Wife Beater: "Who in the hell are you?"
Bud White: "The ghost of Christmas past. Why don't you dance with a man for a change?"
Wife Beater: "What are you, some kind of smart ass?" (tries to attack Bud)
Bud White: (after beating up and handcuffing the wife beater) "You'll be out in a year and a half. I'll get cozy with your parole officer. You touch her again, I'll have you violated on a kiddie raper beef. (grabs wife beater by the head) You know what they do to kiddie rapers in Quentin, don't ya?"
Captain Dudley Smith: "Edmund, you're a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach."
Ed Exley: "You're wrong, sir."
Captain Dudley Smith: "Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?"
Ed Exley: "Dudley, we've been over this."
Captain Dudley Smith: "Yes or no, Edmund?"
Ed Exley: "No!"
Captain Dudley Smith: "Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?"
Ed Exley: "No."
Captain Dudley Smith: "Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer..."
Ed Exley: "No."
Captain Dudley Smith: "Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have..."
Ed Exley: "Dudley, I know you mean well, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father."
Ed Exley: "Do you make the three Negroes for the Nite Owl killings?"
Jack Vincennes: "What?"
Ed Exley: "It's a simple question."
Jack Vincennes: "Why in the world do you wanna go digging any deeper into the Nite Owl killings... Lieutenant?"
Ed Exley: "...Rollo Tamasi."
Jack Vincennes: "Is there more to that, or am I supposed to guess?"
Ed Exley: "Rollo was a purse snatcher. My father ran into him off duty, and he shot my father six times and got away clean. No one even knew who he was. I just made the name up to give him some personality."
Jack Vincennes: "What's your point?"
Ed Exley: "Rollo Tamasi is the reason I became a cop. I wanted to catch the guys who thought they could get away with it. It's supposed to be about justice. Then somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that... Why'd you become a cop?"
Jack Vincennes: (long pause) "I don't remember. (brief hesitation) What do you want, Exley?"
Ed Exley: "I just wanna solve this thing."
Jack Vincennes: "The Nite Owl *was* solved."
Ed Exley: "No, I wanna do it right."
Jack Vincennes: "Even if it means paying the consequences?"
(Exley nods his head, Vincennes stands up from his chair)
Jack Vincennes: "All right, college boy, I'll help. But there's a case you boys in Homicide don't care about, you think it's just another Hollywood 'homosexual'-cide. Well, I don't. You help me with mine, I'll help you with yours. Deal?"
Ed Exley: "Deal."
(Bud White & Ed Exley approach Ellis Loew in the bathroom after he refuses to answer Exley's questions)
Ellis Loew: "Unless you came in here to wipe my ass, I believe we're through."
(White looks at him, silently)
Ellis Loew: "Come on, don't try this 'Good Cop-Bad Cop' crap on me. I practically invented it. So what if some homosexual actor is dead? Boys, girls, ten of them step off the bus to L.A. every day."
(White proceeds to smash Loew's head into the mirror and then sticks it into the toilet)
Ellis Loew: "Pull him off me, Exley!"
Ed Exley: "I don't know how."
Bud White: "Now, I know you think you're the A-number one hotshot. Well, here's the juice: if I take you out, there'll be ten more lawyers to take your place tomorrow. They just won't come on the bus, that's all!"
(White drags Loew into his office and dangles him out of the window by his legs until he confesses)
Ed Exley: "Was that how you used to run the 'Good Cop-Bad Cop'?"