While the new movie
”
Hollywood Homicide,
”
currently playing at Premiere Cinemas, is not Oscar material, it
is a light-hearted, funny action flick that most people will
enjoy.
While the new movie “Hollywood Homicide,” currently playing at Premiere Cinemas, is not Oscar material, it is a light-hearted, funny action flick that most people will enjoy.
The nearly two hour release from Columbia Pictures falls a little short of audience expectations, considering you have two of the most popular male stars on the silver screen.
The real problem with this movie is the lame script, which is almost a rehash of just about every buddy cop movie made in the past 20 years.
The primary saving grace of this movie is the onscreen chemistry between Ford and Hartnett.
The pair is so likeable together that you can believe they are a pair of transitioning police partners, with Ford as the weathered experienced and respected older detective Joe Gavilan who is breaking in a new, younger and less experienced cop KC Calden who is just learning the ropes.
“Hollywood Homicide” is more relaxed and humorus than the neglected and totally underrated “Dark Blue,” a movie in which Kurt Russell’s veteran, rogue, racist cop is the antithesis of Gavilan.
At its best, “Hollywood” has the easy-going, sunny Los Angeles atmosphere of directo Ron Shelton’s “White Men Can’t Jump,” a buddy basketball movie.
Another place where this movie succeeds is with its use of cameos.
There are nearly a dozen cameos artfully laced throughout the movie incliuding Robert Wagner, Eric Idle, Smokey Robinson.
Some of the cameos played so well in the early filming that they wrote the celebrities into the movie.
Most big studio movies don’t have enough characters and subplots, “Hollywood Homicide” has plenty of them.
Hollywood producer Jerry Duran played by Martin Landau (“Ed Wood,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “They Call Me Mr.Tibbs”) is part of Gavilan’s real estate deals. And among the suspects and witnesses in the hip-hop slaying are the undercover cop posing as a transvestite hooker named Wanda, an unexpected cameo from Lou Diamond Phillips, and Venice resident Olivia Robidoux played by Gladys Knight, without the Pips. Olivia’s home make for an amusing chase scene through the Venice canals.
“Hollywood Homicide” is played more for laughs than for action.
It’s definitely over the top and a little slaphappy, especially in the crazy comedy-style chase scene at the end. But it’s an entertaining movie that delivers exactly what it seems to promise: slick, fast, old-pro amusement. Working with screenwriter Robert Souza, Shelton combines some police procedural realism with the buddy-cop antics you expect in a movie like this.
There is some foul language and sexually suggestive scenes that make this movie unsuitable for young children and sensitive adults who are easily offended.
