director
Ron Shelton
screenwriters
Ron Shelton
Robert Souza
producers
Lou Pitt
Ron Shelton
cinematographer
Barry Peterson
music
Alex Wurman
editor
Paul Seydor
cast
Harrison Ford (Joe Gavilan)
Josh Hartnett (K.C. Calden)
Lena Olin (Ruby)
Bruce Greenwood (Lt. Bennie Macko)
Isaiah Washington (Antoine Sartain)
Lolita Davidovich (Cleo Ricard)
Keith David (Leon)
Master P (Julius Armas)
Dwight Yoakam (Leroy Wasley)
Martin Landau (Jerry Duran)
Lou Diamond Phillips (Wanda)
Gladys Knight (Olivia Robidoux)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 111m
u.s.
release: June 13, 2003
video
availability: TBA
official website
other ron
shelton films
reviewed on this website:
- dark
blue
- tin
cup
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Hollywood Homicide looks dangerously close to the sort
of high-concept "levity" that Sylvester Stallone engaged
in -- remember Oscar and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot,
or have you suppressed the memories? -- when he figured out that
nobody much wanted him as an action hero any more. Harrison Ford
has been altogether too grim in recent years (in his flop K-19
he went so far as to adopt a Russian accent), so the movie feels
like penance, his way of showing the suits that he can still
crack a smile and goof around. I never thought I'd see the day
when Kurt Russell (who certainly deserved it) got the lead in
a serious Ron Shelton movie (Dark
Blue, from earlier this year) and Ford starred in a Ron
Shelton comedy, but there he is.
Shelton, who wrote the script
with Robert Souza, seems to approach the movie as Dark Blue
Lite. Once again we have a grizzled California detective
(Ford) paired off with a rookie (Josh Hartnett here); once again
the theme of cop fathers and cop sons is explored. I can't say
why Shelton has temporarily (one hopes) abandoned the genre he
has all to himself -- the intelligent minor-league-sports movie
(Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump, Tin
Cup) -- in favor of cop films, but what works in Dark
Blue also works in Hollywood Homicide. Shelton
knows how weary men talk to each other, and he knows the importance
of sharp women in their lives. The unstable camaraderie of cops,
for Shelton, is not so different from the bond between athletes.
Still, this is going to go
down as one of the lesser films in the portfolios of Shelton,
Ford, and most everyone else involved. The mystery of what possessed
Shelton to cast Lou Diamond Phillips as a undercover cop posing
as a hooker named Wanda is eclipsed only by the mystery of what
possessed Phillips to take the role (maybe he's doing
penance). Smart beauties like Lena Olin (as Ford's psychic-hotline
girlfriend, whose precog skills come in handy) and Shelton regular
Lolita Davidovich aren't given much to work with; this is a jostling
boys'-room comedy, wherein odd couple Ford and Hartnett try to
solve a hip-hop murder while deflecting the best efforts of skunky
Internal Affairs honcho Bruce Greenwood (who's going to become
the next William Atherton if he isn't careful) to boot Ford off
the force.
Only in a movie are cop partners
so ostentatiously different from each other. It goes beyond a
generation gap: Ford's a no-nonsense, steak-and-beer guy who
brokers real-estate deals on the side; Hartnett watches his diet
and has his own sideline as a yoga instructor and aspiring
actor. As an only-in-Hollywood portrait of detectives, this sort
of makes sense, but there's little evidence of any mutual respect
or affection between the two. Ford interacts better with pros
like Keith David as a fellow cop or Martin Landau as a music
producer who worked with some of the Motown greats Ford loves
(the best bit in the movie is when Ford gets home from his two
jobs and sways to "Tracks of My Tears").
Hollywood Homicide uses its milieu for some amusing cameos
(look, there's Frank Sinatra Jr. as a lawyer! Hey, that's a Monty
Python alumnus getting busted for solicitation!), and there's
some perverse pleasure in seeing Ford, Landau, and hip-hop artist
Master P sharing the same table. The movie is harmless and sometimes
funny (I laughed out loud at Hartnett's crash course in Zen delivered
to a couple of dismayed kids), with dialogue sharper than that
of the average American comedy, but it devolves into the expected
car chase and shoot-outs, and feels more than anything like the
pilot episode of a mid-season hour-long comedy-drama on CBS.
As for Harrison Ford, maybe it's time for him to cut to the chase
and do something small like Stallone's Cop
Land. It might not work for him, as it didn't really
work for Stallone (who fell back into action cheese), but at
least it would nudge him out of the rut he's been in for about
fifteen years now.
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