MOVIE REVIEW

Hollywood Homicide  (2003)

Starring: Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett
Director: Ron Shelton

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Columbia Tristar

Release Date: 6.13.03

Review Posted: 6.13.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Sara Michelle Fetters

"Ford and Hartnett Shine in Funny Homicide"

Hollywood Homicide, the new film from director Ron Shelton (Dark Blue) and starring Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett, doesn’t tread a single strand of new ground. It’s a buddy cop movie about deceit, murder and corruption with two mismatched partners who must solve their differences in order to solve a crime with action and mayhem following close on their heels.

Except, there really isn’t all that much action or mayhem and the differences between veteran and pupil haven’t anything to do with how much they like or care about one another. In fact, Ford’s detective Joe Gavilan and Hartnett’s detective K.C. Calden like each other quite a bit, it’s just their sideline activities that keep getting in the way of their police work. The former moonlights as a real estate agent, a particularly difficult property vexing him day and night, while the later spends his extra time conducting yoga lessons for barely-clad model-types all the while harboring dreams of being an actor.

In any other city this would all seem odd. But on the streets of Hollywood detectives like Gavilan and Calden, with their attention on both work and sideline aspirations, grow on every majestic palm tree.

Shelton, co-writing with Robert Souza, returns to the type of filmmaking he does best with Hollywood Homicide. This is not an action film in the strictest sense of the word, per se, but instead more of a relationship comedy in the vein of the director’s best like Bull Durham and Tin Cup. It’s just that, instead of tossing a baseball or hitting golf shots, Gavilan and Calden just happen to be cops. This isn’t a movie with big, outlandish explosions or unbelievable spectacle. It’s a film about two normal guys trying to make the best they can out of lives they’ve built and now aren’t too sure they even like.

Not that there is no action in Hollywood Homicide. It may take some time to get there, but Shelton stages a bravura final twenty minutes featuring a kinetically charged chase sequence that’s really something special. Going from foot, to car, back to foot, once more over to car and finally landing face-to-face, it’s the type of denouement in which hero meets villain that I didn’t feel even slightly ashamed about wanting to cheer about. It is supremely well done and has the feel and vitality of what just this sort of hunt might actually go like if it were to actually happen out in the real world.

But the real joy is watching Ford and Hartnett wrap their tongues around Shelton and Souza richly textured dialogue. Ford, in particular, is a hoot deftly underplaying his role as the wily and exasperated Gavilan. It’s fun to watch the veteran action star almost slouching his way through this film. Ford knows his history as an actor, knows exactly what audiences have paid over and over to see him do, and has no problem throwing those conventions and expectations on their head. The running gag involving his un-sellable house is a hoot, but even better is the actor’s fearlessness in taking on a role that asks him so obviously to act his age. Whether it is cowering behind a police car trying to count all the gunshots or trying desperately to keep together the remaining pieces of his own dignity, Ford nails all of Gavilan’s insecurities brilliantly. Not since Working Girl has the actor been called upon to use his comedic skills so dexterously and he does not disappoint.

Hartnett is nearly as good. One scene in particular when he tries to explain how he got caught up teaching Yoga is quite funny, ending in a piece of repartee between Gavilan and Calden that is deftly amusing. What’s really interesting, though, is how comfortable Hartnett seems to be interacting with icon Ford. The two have a delicately balanced chemistry that seems to belie mutual admiration, making the warm-hearted give and take between the two so much more believable.

What’s really nice, though, is the scripts subtle nuance as to how these two’s fractured personal lives play upon their jobs. While one does seem to feed the other – Gavilan isn’t above inquiring into a person’s housing status as he questions them while Calden casually invites other subjects to a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" he’s putting on to attract a high-profile agent – it’s their job as police officers that doesn’t seem to suffer. In fact, when it comes to investigating cases, these guys are real pros; it’s when they try to deal with everything else that it all seems to be hopelessly messed up.

Granted, there is plenty that doesn’t work in Hollywood Homicide. For one thing, the murder investigation at the center of the film – an up and coming rap group is viciously murdered after performing at a nightclub – wouldn’t even be good fodder for a sub-par episode of NYPD Blue. It doesn’t help that Isaiah Washington’s (Ghost Ship) record mogul villain is entirely too one note to be even remotely effective and his seamy alliance with a dirty LAPD detective doesn’t really hold any water. Then there is a subplot involving an internal affairs investigation into Gavilan and Calden that adds absolutely nothing. And while Bruce Greenwood (Below) is very good as the smarmy IA department head, his presence in the film seems more like filler in a movie that is already far too long to begin with.

Luckily, many of the other subplots do work especially a romance between Ford and Lena Olin’s (Queen of the Damned) radio psychic. Their scenes together are warm and charming, a beautiful passion bubbling just below the surface between the two of them the likes of which you don’t normally find between two mature adults in a Hollywood motion picture. Considering that Ford is currently dating the old-enough-to-be-his-daughter Calista Flockhart, there is an irony to the fact Hollywood Homicide gets commended for showcasing a maturated romance.

All kidding aside, this is a good movie and one I was surprised I liked quite as much as I did. While not perfect, it is easily one of the better adult-oriented comedies to come along in quite some time. In a summer that is already filled with too many explosions, pyrotechnics and unfunny one-liners, something urbane and winningly witty is a pleasant thing to run into indeed.

Rating: 3 out of 4

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