Hollywood Homicide Review
by John Ulmer (johnulmer2003 AT msn DOT com)October 16th, 2003
HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE
Rating: 1.5/5 stars
REVIEW BY JOHN ULMER
"Hollywood Homicide" is pretty standard stuff by any account. It's a cop-buddy film minus the laughs, minus the quick pace, and minus the chemistry between the buddies. It stars old timer Harrison Ford and up-and-coming, newer babe magnet Josh Hartnett, who, in thirty years, will be making movies just like this where he's with another young yuppie--if he lasts in the showbiz that long.
The movie opens inside a nightclub, where we see a rapper brutally shot to death before his stage debut. The next morning, Joe (Ford) gets a call, along with K.C. (Hartnett), and off they go to the crime scene to investigate into the homicide, use their brains to reach a conclusion about how the man was killed, and order food. (At one point later in the film, K.C. says that he hates dead bodies and they make him throw up, yet K.C. orders food at the scene of the murder early on, before his repulsiveness for murders is divulged into. That's poor scriptwriting, my friends.)
Joe and K.C. follow their clues and eventually stumble upon a small little conspiracy involving the rapper and his band that I did not follow at all because I lost my interest in the film very, very early on. I sat back in my chair and just waited for the credits. Why are the bad movies always two hours long?
Buddy movies have to distinguish their characters in order for the audience to feel that they're real. I was reminded of "Lethal Weapon" while watching "Hollywood Homicide," and I realized how much stronger the former is, not only in terms of pacing, action, dialogue, and so on, but in the actual characters. They have distinctions that do not differ from scene to scene. Small things such as K.C. claiming dead bodies make him sick and then ordering a burger early on may not mean much to writers but it displays inconsistencies in the very nature of the characters. These are supposed to be real guys--you can't just change them on a whim.
K.C. likes acting. Joe likes Real Estate. In fact, much of "Hollywood Homicide" is little more than one long promotion for Hartnett to play the Brando character in the next remake of "A Streetcar Named Desire." He carries a little script around with him throughout the entire film that contains the dialogue for the film. He shouts it when he wakes up, he shouts it in the car, and at the end we even see him acting it out on stage. Such shameless promotion.
Watching Harrison Ford in "Hollywood Homicide" confirmed my suspicions that the man is too old for another outing as Indiana Jones. He looks bitter and frail here--any youthfulness he has displayed in recent years goes to waste in this one film. He's looking a bit heavier, his skin is starting to wrinkle and flab all over the place...it's not a pretty sight.
Josh Hartnett, who starred in "Black Hawk Down," is a real hinderance to this film. He's simply not funny. He also has no chemistry with Ford whatsoever. Ford tried, and it's visible, but Hartnett is simply a bad comedian and not only can he not deliver punchlines, he can't stop giving that monotone expression that reveals he's as stupid and blank inside as he looks.
I recently gave a bad rating to "Bad Boys" (1995) as part of a retrospective review. But at least Will Smith and Martin Lawrence had chemistry. Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett do not. And Josh Hartnett is not funny--at all. And that's a problem. I would rather have another "Lethal Weapon" film than have to sit through this again.
- John Ulmer
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