Ron Shelton, the director of any number of ‘men like sports, but they have feelings too’ movies (see Play it to the Bone, Tin Cup, etc), was last seen redeeming himself with the brilliantly brutish corrupt cop flick Dark Blue. Hollywood Homicide marks an unfortunate return to ‘form’, and the result is an uncertain and lacklustre affair that never quite decides if it’s Hollywood satire, a male bonding comedy or a gritty cop thriller.
There’s nothing even remotely approaching the impact of Kurt Russell’s knockout central performance in Dark Blue, but worse still, Homicide doesn’t even achieve a sense of chemistry between its two leads. Indeed, they’re so wooden one keeps wishing that they’d piss off and find work in a Ronseal vanish commercial where they belong: Ford plays yet another variation on his weary veteran-cop persona, while Hartnett – a phenomenally untalented creature frequently employed as vacuous eye-candy – registers another spectacular black hole of a performance.
The fact that Hollywood Homicide’s highlight is an Eric Idle cameo as a kerb-crawling English actor in Hollywood, more or less says it all.