Loading ...Movie Review - Hollywood Homicide
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2003 / 111 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
“Hollywood Homicide” may not be the greatest movie I’ve seen in ages, but it is a rather refreshing concoction that, at the very least, puts a fresh new twist on the whole buddy cop genre. It also houses the most entertaining performance that Harrison Ford has graced us with in quite a while.
The plot of “Hollywood Homicide” is fairly routine: there has been a mass murder and two cops are called in to investigate. This time, however, the people who’ve been murdered are a rising, new rap group and the two cops called in are Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. Unlike most cop movies, this one doesn’t start with the two cops being partnered up for the first time and rubbing against one another in the wrong way for a while before gaining a begrudging respect for one another. We’ve seen that situation thousands of times and, frankly, it’s got mold on it. Writer/Director Ron Shelton instead gives us two guys who’ve been partners for a while and get along pretty well with one another. The begrudging respect is built in. They’re not best friends or anything, but they get along pretty well. Well enough to unload their troubles on one another and to laugh at certain eccentricities that one or the other happen to possess. Hartnett and Ford are actually quite great together. They have an easy rapport that enlivened pretty much every scene.
But the real genius of “Hollywood Homicide” is that it’s a cop movie that actually uses its locale to the fullest advantage. The events of this movie could not have taken place in any other city in the world. The two main cops (Ford and Hartnett) moonlight as a real estate agent and a yoga instructor, respectfully, and Hartnett’s character even dreams of becoming an actor. Harrison is not too great of a real estate agent and quite a lot of fun comes from watching him try to crack the case while putting more effort into unloading pieces of real estate that he’s been stuck with forever. It puts a fun, little spin onto the proceedings. I liked the fact that the case was secondary to these guys. It was just their job and, while they do it well and do end up solving the case (oh, come on, like you didn’t know that was gonna happen) they seem more concerned with getting a producer to watch their audition or getting Martin Landau to buy a mansion. I’ve never seen that in a cop movie before. I also liked the little eccentric touches that get sprinkled in along the way like Ford sleeping with a telephone psychic or Hartnett getting information by promising to shop around an informant’s screenplay. Those were clever, little touches that really lent the movie a sense of personality all its own.
The film is far from perfect: some of the action sequences could have used some tighter pacing and some of the plot contrivances are a little too convenient. The things that don’t work are, in fact, the things that we have seen before. What makes this outing so much fun are the things that we haven’t seen before. We’ve never spent two hours with characters like these and never seen Hollywood used in a movie in quite this way. Those are the things that give this film what so many movies these days seem to lack: personality. This movie is unique. It’s eccentric. It’s fun. It’s got California written all over it. The leads have chemistry together. The dialogue is snappy. The script is fresh and constructed, mostly, with care. All these things might not make “Hollywood Homicide” perfect, but they definitely make it distinctive. And, for once, Harrison Ford looks like he’s having a good time. And seeing Harrison have a good time makes me have a good time. He’s got that Han Solo wink in his eye for the first time in at least a decade and it made me happy. If you care about little things like that, then you might find yourself caring about “Hollywood Homicide”.
