The movie stars Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett as the
two cops, named Joe Gavilan and K.C. Calden, who are detectives assigned to Hollywood.
Galvan is so busy with his real estate business that he tries to sell a house
to the owner of a club where four rappers have just been murdered, and later
negotiates the purchase price during a police chase. Calden has decided he
wants to be an actor, and makes Galivan rehearse lines for him from A
Streetcar Named Desire. Galivan is not impressed: “Who wrote this stuff?”
The movie was directed by Ron Shelton, who co-wrote with Robert Souza. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “Shelton also made "Bull Durham" and
"White Men Can't Jump" and specializes in funny dialogue for guy
characters who would rather talk than do just about anything else.” One of the
enjoyments of “Hollywood Homicide” is that it’s more interested in its two
silly cops than in the murder plot. Their dialogue transfers otherwise simple
scenes. Ebert noted, “It's kind of a double act, between a man who has seen
everything and a man who seen too much.” Consider the part where K.C. drives a
vehicle with a mother and her two small children. He needs it to chase a
villain. “We’re gonna die!” yells one of the kids. Ebert said, “"Yes,"
agrees K.C., who moonlights as a yoga instructor, "we are all going to die
someday, but..." His philosophical observations are cut short by a crash.”
The movie starts with an upbeat song on a rap group in
a music club. Four people are dead when Joe and K.C. arrive to investigate. Joe
immediately orders food. K.C. tells the club owner he is an actor. Their investigation
is hindered by an inconvenient development: They are under investigation by
Benne Macko, played by Bruce Greenwood, the Internal Affairs guy who hates Joe,
and who reminds everyone once again that movie villains usually have a hard C
or K in their names.
Ebert said, “Joe is suspected of "mingling
funds," which is to say, he confuses his personal debts and the debts of
his real estate business.” He has been seen with Ferre Salesclerk, played by
Lolita Davidovich, who is a known prostitute. No wonder. You do not get to be
an unknown prostitute by being driven around town in your own stretch
limousine. Internal Affairs thinks he is fooling around with Salesclerk, but he
isn’t. He’s playing around with Ruby the psychic, played by Lena Olin. Ebert said, “She
is yet another in the baffling legion of Los Angeles women who believe it is
fun to make love on a blanket on the hardwood floor of an empty house while
surrounded by a lot of candles.”
At Harrison Ford’s age, this counts as a dangerous
stunt. But Ford just gets better, more purified, more laconic and more sternly
likeable, every year. It is hard to catch him doing anything at all while he’s
acting, and yet whatever it is he isn’t doing, it works. Ebert said, “You don't
feel he's going for laughs when he tries to sell the club owner a house, while
the two of them are standing in fresh pools of blood, metaphorically speaking;
you feel he desperately needs to unload the house.”
Ebert continued, “Hartnett makes an able partner for
Ford, trading deadpan dialogue and telling everyone he's really an actor. He's
given one of Shelton's nicest little scenes, when he goes to the morgue and
looks at the dead bodies of the murder victims (he hates looking at dead
bodies), and then notices some other dead bodies that have just arrived at the
morgue, checks their shoe sizes, and says, "Hey ... those guys shot these
guys."” There is a chase and a half at the end of the movie, a lot of it
near the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. That gives the movie a chance
to interrupt Robert Wagner as he’s leaving his handprints in front of Grumann’s
Chinese Theatre, and obviously the movie is filled with cameos and people walking
by, including Frank Sinatra Jr. as a show-biz lawyer, Martin Landau very funny
as a passing producer who needs to leave his mansion, Lou Diamond Phillips as
Wanda the cop in drag, Gladys Knight, Dwight Yoakam, Isaiah Washington, Master
P, Kurupt, Eric Idle, Dr. Dre and just plain Dre.
Ebert said, “Much of the closing excitement depends on
the Fallacy of the Climbing Killer, that dependable chase cliche in which the
killer climbs to a high place, from which he cannot escape unless he can fly.” “Hollywood
Homicide” uses this as an excuse to show police helicopters and TV news
helicopters flying over one another out of the skies. It’s a masterful chase,
well done, but the dialogue is the reason to see the movie. This may be the
most exciting film ever made about real estate.
Ebert noted, “I am aware that "realtor" is a
trademark and is always supposed to be used with a capital "R." But I
refuse to go along. Realtors can complain all they want, but why should they
get an upper-case R just because they say so? Would we capitalize Philosopher,
Exterminator, Proctologist or Critic?”
This is a really funny movie. If you haven’t seen it,
see if and have a good laugh. Don’t listen to everyone else who has bashed this
movie. See it for yourself and judge it based on your own thoughts. I think
everyone will get a good laugh out of this, and it is an action-packed thriller
that you will get in to.
Look out next week when I end off “Lou Diamond
Phillips Month” with another movie he did that is based on true events.
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