12 Movies Set in Downtown LA

Tens of thousands of movies have been filmed in Los Angeles – it’s the world capital of the entertainment industry after all. However, that’s way too many to work through and, frankly, some of them weren’t that good, so we’ve brought you our list of twelve great movies set in downtown LA. If you’re visiting consider watching these movies either before or after your visit, they’re all classics and you can probably stream some of them on a streaming service. It’s fun to spot locations that you’ve been to when they pop up in movies and some of these films, such as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, comment on Los Angeles history itself.

THE KID (1921)

The Charlie Chaplin classic was filmed around old Chinatown (where Union Station is now) and on Olvera Street (for the final chase scene). Chaplin needed a slum area as a location and at the time this neighborhood looked perfect (much of it was to be shortly demolished). He also used downtown LA as a location in his 1931 classic City Lights, when Chaplin drives through Pershing Square mid way through the movie. The premiere for City Lights was at the magnificent Los Angeles Theatre, in downtown’s Historic Theatre District.

We visit the area on our LA: Food + History + Design Tour.

Also if you're particularly interested in Charlie Chaplin's Los Angeles read this article which lists 8 key locations associated with him.

SAFETY LAST! (1923)

Another comedy classic, in this case starring Harold Lloyd, in which our hero has to climb the outside of an office building to get his girlfriend back. In those early movie-making days stuntmen didn’t exist and neither did special effects, so that’s actually Lloyd himself climbing the fifteen story building (although a professional acrobat did some of the more dangerous sequences). Safety Last! used numerous locations throughout downtown and you can see what it was like back in the 1920’s. Harold Lloyd himself used to live in the Bradbury Mansion on what was then Court Hill (since demolished), in front of City Hall, just a few blocks away.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)

So many movies set in downtown LA seem to be noir movies (probably because the directors’ loved the neighborhood as a location), and Double Indemnity is a fine example of the genre. It is in fact, along with Chinatown (see below), widely regarded as one of the greatest film noirs ever made. Fred McMurray’s shady insurance salesman’s office is on Pershing Square and he visits Olvera Street for dinner (and it still looks almost the same today).

CRISS CROSS (1949)

Burt Lancaster (with an early blink and you’ll miss it appearance by Tony Curtis) is the lead in this noir movie, made just after the Second World War, in which a femme fatale (played by the seductive Ava Gardner) tempts Burt into doing something you know he shouldn’t. The movie uses a host of downtown LA locations, including many that no longer exist, such as on Bunker Hill (when it was a residential neighborhood) and Union Station.

CHINATOWN (1974)

Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston give career defining performances in a story drawn from the real life history of Los Angeles – the ‘Water Wars’. It’s often forgotten now, but this was when ‘the syndicate’, a group of rich and powerful local businessmen, took the water from the high sierra and brought it down to a thirsty Los Angeles – and made themselves even richer than they already were. Apart from just being highly watchable, Chinatown is a great movie for the historical perspective it gives the viewer of 1920’s-era political corruption in Los Angeles.

BLADE RUNNER (1982)

Harrison Ford, Sean Young and Rutger Hauer star in this neo-noir tale of a detective hunting super-androids through a future, dystopian, Los Angeles. It used a host of downtown locations, including the Bradbury Building, Million Dollar Theater and Union Station and it’s one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made. Blade Runner is set in 2019  – and we still don’t have flying cars – but it did prefigure scientific developments such as the increasing use of artificial intelligence.

PRETTY WOMAN (1990)

You thought Pretty Woman was set exclusively in Hollywood and Beverly Hills? Wrong! Several downtown locations appear in this romantic comedy classic – the Cicada (where Richard Gere and Julia Roberts have dinner and she accidentally throws a snail at a waiter), the Bank of America Building (the location for the business meetings) and Grand Park (where Richard Gere and Julia Roberts read poetry). Not that you need it, but we’ve given you the perfect excuse to watch it again.

L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997) – TOP PHOTO

A brutal love letter to 1950’s Los Angeles, this gripping film, starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kim Basinger filmed several pivotal scenes in downtown LA, including City Hall, the Pacific Electric Building and the location of the Nite Owl Diner. L.A. Confidential also shines a light on corruption at the L.A.P.D., which was rife in those days, opening with the real-life ‘Bloody Christmas’ scandal of 1951. Hush hush!

COLLATERAL (2004)

Starring Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise, Collateral is almost a companion piece to Heat, director Michael Mann’s earlier movie that was also set in and around downtown Los Angeles. Few directors since the Second Word War have photographed downtown as stylishly as Mann, who clearly loves the urban landscape of glass and steel towers ringed by freeways. The memorable denouement, in which Cruise’s hitman chases Foxx’s taxi driver down into the subway, takes place at 7th St Metro Center.

THE SOLOIST (2009)

Another great film about downtown, again starring Jamie Foxx, The Soloist, is one of the best movies ever made about one of the most serious issues that Los Angeles faces (and has since the 1930's) - homelessness. One could argue that we've always had a homelessness problem, even going back to the nineteenth century, but there's no question that it long ago reached crisis point. The Soloist, features wonderfully sensitive performances by Foxx (who really should have won an Oscar for playing real-life homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers) and co-star Robert Downey Junior and it's a great movie for getting an understanding of modern homelessness in the US. The film is almost entirely set in downtown.