You know a movie has an identity crisis when it goes for laughs, and the ads and trailers don't even hint that it's a comedy.
The gritty ads for the Harrison Ford/Josh Hartnett cop-comedy Hollywood Homicide suggest something along the grim lines of Narc, rather than a film that reaches so far for laughs that it has Harrison Ford steal a little girl's pink bike for a chase scene.
Sure, Ford has become painfully stiff onscreen since the long-ago of Indiana Jones and Working Girl, but if they're willing to go this far to loosen him up, why not just have him be the geek in a carnival dunk-me booth?
In any case, consider this a consumer advisory. To go into Hollywood Homicide expecting a serious cop film is to be greatly disappointed. As a mix-and-match buddy comedy, however, it has its moments.
Hollywood Homicide has too many holes and glossed-over plot points to be taken seriously as drama. The main nasty business is the murder of all members of a highly touted L.A. hip-hop group. The movie posits the prime suspect early and doesn't bother with red herrings, though at the point where push comes to shove, it's not exactly clear what everybody is being arrested for.
Finally, as if director Ron Shelton realized he'd run out of exposition, there's an interminable chase scene with what must be six-figures of collateral damage.
But comic elements? Hollywood Homicide is larded with them. For starters, there are your mismatched partners. Ford is Joe Gavilan, a cheeseburger-eating, scotch-swilling veteran who moonlights as a realtor. His investigation of the hip-hop murder is sandwiched between his deal-brokering of a $6-million manse -- the vendor being an old Hollywood mogul (Martin Landau), and the buyer a hip-hop club impresario (Master P).
Hartnett, meanwhile, is a New Agey twentysomething who moonlights as a Yoga instructor and wannabe actor. All that's keeping him on the LAPD is the legacy of his dad, who was murdered in the line of duty. As a running gag, he's a Tantric sex expert, who keeps running into ex-flames whose names he forgets.
For his part, Ford has to make do with Lena Olin (poor guy), the ex-girlfriend of an internal affairs officer (Bruce Greenwood) who's determined to nail him for his shady moonlighting gigs.
It says something about Ford and Hartnett's lukewarm chemistry that they're funnier apart than they are together. And Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump) has a sly sense of humour and a deft hand with jump cuts, which he uses to comic effect in an over-the-top interrogation scene and various scenes where Ford's big sale is on the verge of unravelling.
Harrison Ford, funnyman. That's quite a trick by itself.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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