Customer Reviews

Hollywood Homicide

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

I'm not going to summarize it (as it has been many times over here), but I will say that for Harrison Ford fans, this is a real disappointment. Both Harrison Ford & Josh Hartnett play somewhat goofball cops who are sloppily trying to solve a night club shooting in a black neighbourhood. I personally thought the acting was horrible, the one liners that Harrison Ford made were tacky & corny, and the jokes missed the punch line. But the good thing is that Harrison Ford has many great movies to make up for this one; and as for Josh Hartnett, well he is young and has a lot to learn.

i was so disappointed with this movie.a buddy cop film with Josh
Hartnett and Harrison Ford should have had potential,shouldn't it?Ford
and Hartnett play two cops who are partners and who also have second
jobs to make ends meet or to have financial independence.they are
called in to investigate the murder of a rap group.hilarity should
ensue,right?if by hilarity,you mean endless yawning,then yeah,hilarity
ensues.this one really hurt my brain.it was agonizingly boring to the
nth degree.i think the real problem with this movie,is there doesn't
seem to be any comedic chemistry between Ford and Hartnett and that
pretty much sinks the whole movie.for me,"Hollywood Homicide" is a
1.5/5

All in all the story and plotline is very formula; there are good guys that are misunderstood and bad guys that are silly and scared. The good guys chase and chase and chase the bad guys. Will they catch the bad guys? Will the bad guys confess to unbelievable crimes? Or will just once the bad guys get away. Don't hold your breath.

There is an added wrinkle as both Detective Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford) and his rookie partner Kasey Calden (Josh Hartnett) take care of outside interests while in pursuit.

Mean time it is fun watching this almost cartoon like execution, as they run past all the familiar landmarks out and about Los Angeles, California, USA:

Beverly Hills, Hollywood & Highland, Hollywood, Los Angeles Subway System, Mt. Olympus in Hollywood Hills, Pacific Palisades, Parker Center Police Headquarters -at 150 N. Los Angeles St., Parking Lot, L.A.P.D. Hollywood Station at 1358 Wilcox Ave., Santa Monica, Venice Canals, and Venice.

Hollywood Homicide is a decent movie.
nothing great.

plot is ok, predictable.

but good entertainment.

HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE plays like a Starsky and Hutch episode, that might air on Showtime since it's violent and has some nudity. Harrison Ford is a LAPD cop who moonlights as a real estate broker; Josh Hartnett is his young partner, who wants to be an actor and teaches some kind of yoga on the side. Together they investigate the execution style slaying of a rap group named H20 Slick, a group who was planning on getting out of their contract with a sleazy record producer, played by Isaiah Washington (True Crime, Ghost Ship). Add Bruce Greenwood (Below) as an IA cop who's trying to nail Ford due to an old vendetta; Gladys Knight as the mother of an eyewitness to the crime; Lena Olin as Ford's psychic radio star girlfriend; Lou Diamond Phillips as a male hooker undercover cop; Martin Landau as a hasbeen director; Master P as a record producer out to buy the perfect house; cameos by Robert Wagner and Eric Idle---you get the picture.
Ford and Hartnett have a good rapport and some of their dialogue is hilarious, but the movie is so disoriented and implausible, it leaves you wanting more...of what, I'm not sure, but something's missing.
Not a bad time passer.

Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett star in "Hollywood Homicide", an action comedy that has a lot to say about the sillieness of buddy-cop movies. Ford and Hartnett are partners assigned to investigate a nightclub massacre. The problem is that neither one of them really want to be cops; Ford has a real estate buissness on the side and Hartnett is an actor off duty. I am sorry to say that there are no stand out performances here, which is sorry to say considering the outstanding cast involoved. Ford and Hartnett are usually very good, but here they are just, well, blah. Lina Olin is just kind of there in a very rediculos subplot involving her psycic powers. Isaiah Washington, Lolita Davidovitch, Keith David, and Matrin Landau are all underused in their bit roles. The problem is that it wants to be a comedy, but it isn't very funny, too many cliches. It isn't very action packed, either. The only real action piece is at the end, but it is too long, and it just dosn't seem to have any punch to it. I was very disappointed, I am truelly sorry to say. If you can find it on TV, that would be best. All I can say in it's defense is that It's biggest problem is that it feels like no one was really trying, it is just a lazy movie all the way through. It's only defense is I have seen much worst.

harrison ford is playing a over the hill grandfather of a cop in his 60's moon lighting as a realestate salesman and the handsome josh harnett playing the doof partner.

get a real storey with substance, harrison ford does have a fan base, but stay away from the hip hop element or sound track, it just annoys people seeing that in a theatre.

harrison ford get a face lift, ya look like a worn out old man !

Let's cut to the chase. Hollywood Homicide is not a classic. It's not Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, or even within sniffing distance of Chinatown. It's borderline whether or not it can be classified as a comedy or not. For all that, it's a harmless piece of amusement that has lots of little disparate elements which individually are appealing but which never gel into a cohesive unit. Sure it's annoying, but it doesn't mean the film is a complete waste of time.

What the film has going for it: the overall concept, the location, the sardonic travelogue quality/tribute to Los Angeles, Martin Landau, Ron Shelton's track record as a director, a great car chase sequence, and some very funny character quirks on the part of Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. Yes, these are not things to hang your hat on, but they do provide some good moments. Ford never looks quite comfortable and Hartnett is fine once you accept that fact that he's just an overgrown goofball, but the plot is flimsy at best and seems to be just a sideshow for the interplay between Ford and Hartnett.

One other note about Harrison Ford - his image is such that for him to step into what is perceived as a comedy is almost a culture shock. You don't know whether or not you should laugh or feel awkward. Me, I tended to laugh more often than not.

Ron Shelton has proven himself to be a very competent filmmaker and if he missteps here a bit, it's not for lack of trying. You can see that somewhere in this mess there's a decent film but it shouldn't be the audience's responsibility to find it. Nevertheless, it's not the worst thing to come out in the last couple of years and I for one enjoyed most of it.

Okay.. I nearly fell asleep a few times during the first hour of the film. Harrison Ford walked through his part in this film and he deserves better, and Harnett, though potentially talented, is simply NOT convincing as the sensitive, metaphysical yoga instructor-cop. Never mind, it was fun to see Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and Frank Sinatra Jr. in bit parts... the familiar landmarks around Hollywood, and the chase scene at the end of the film is really good... but it's not enough to save this film for me. OH, by the way, this is supposed to be a comedy.. it is NOT. It has some humorous IRONY in it, but NEVER comedy. Martin Landau is great in his part... but its all too brief.... too bad.

I wouldn't recommend this unless there is nothing else on the shelf with an A-list actor that you might slap up. Actually A-list? Hmmm... Harrison Ford does not provide on the goods there and certainly something has gone wrong. I wonder if this latest opus of "Please help Mr. Ford pay his alimony" has anything to do with why I watched it. Maybe Mr. Ford might sometime do what it is that we pay to see him do. What happened to his little 'on-the-side films' like Witness? This was a leading man for a generation of Sci-Fi trilogy watchers and probably the greatest adventurer on the screen. He should know better. So should Josh Hartnett.... So should an actor I was beginning to hope to see a lot better from - Bruce Greenwood. This flick is a nothing. It's everything that is wrong about Hollywood today. These three actors are great but Hollywood Homicide is more like Hollywood Suicide when all is said done. This is a bomb of a movie. A real stinker and everyone should know better including the director Ron Shelton who brought us another cop piece that was actually quite good - Dark Blue. I do not know what went wrong or why they did this. The movie has no genre. It is somewhere between a cop buddy parody movie and a love fest for the two co-stars who like to do nothing more than make money on the side (In more ways than one) through legit second jobs like teaching yoga and selling houses as a real estate agent. This is more akin to an episode of Sex in the City. Forget about the homicide in the title. It is something that doesn't motivate you in the least. You don't even pay any attention to it for that. I have forgotten what it is? Something about a rap record producer assassinating people with a hit-man who just happens to have connections with Harnett's dead dad. So why did I watch it? It reminds me of Showtime from DeNiro or Pluto Nash or I Spy or something like one of these really silly Eddy Murphy flicks. Yeah - like that. So is this the kind of material that deserves to be called Ford's greatest turkey? Probably yeah, it is actually. So here it is for the bottom of his pile. It's rubbish. It is Ford not going well at his trademark Ford funny™. Hartnett probably just passes as the token kid but hams it up considerably. Bruce Greenwood is a big disappointment who does some grinning now and again. Even Dwight Yoakam does not repeat much of what he had to offer in Panic Room.

*Cluck Cluck* Thanksgiving has a new contender.