Hollywood Homicide review by Jackass Tom

The Movie is its own Crime

I think we have all been there before. You are at home, sicker than a dog, taking a day or two off work or school. The only thing to console your aches and pains in those early afternoons is your couch and hopefully something decent on one of 35 movie channels. Something, hits your one open eye, maybe a movie you remember being in theatres monthes earlier… maybe its Hollywood Homicide. Once you reach the initial investment of 20 minutes, the cost of exerting your pained body to reach for the remote to change the channel is high. But my friends, it is not higher than the cost of actually finishing this God-awful picture, known as Hollywood Homicide.

The plot is a typical plug-and-play buddy detective flick. It takes place is Los Angeles (now you are getting Lethal Weapon flashes), or more precisely Hollywood (Beverly Hills Cop?). There have been some killings (check off the box, that says the people killed are “Entertainers – Rappers”). Now put together your buddy-detectives. The first one is the older vet who is a little too old to chase down the bad guys (Harrison Ford – my how your selection of movie roles has sucked in the past 5 years). His buddy, is the young-but-no-so-eager kid detective (Josh Hartnett – my how your selection of movie roles has sucked…your entire career). Give them names like Joe Gavilan (Ford) and K.C.Calden (Hartnett). Make sure the sergeant chews out on the old guy for some crappy reason, and the young guy has some vendetta like “my old man was a copped who was killed in the line of duty”. Then make sure there is a “bad cop” who becomes the villain. If there is anything I have learned from watching too many of these movies, its that no matter how bad the dudes are on the street, there is always one cat in the office that is even worse. Maybe he has a pony-tail too. Fag. No wonder, he is killing peeps… he has a crappy pony tail. There… you have yourself a bad movie.

The characters do get a little more flesh. Joe, hasn’t been laid in centuries, and Calden seems to know ever young blonde they meet…oh yeah he is also into Tantra (for the love of…). Joe has a part time job in real estate, and uses his cop-job to find new clients. Calden wants to be an actor but…get this… he sucks at it! Maybe I was wrong, this is the perfect role for Josh Hartnett! He is constantly training for a part in A Streetcar Named Desire, and screams “Stella!” out of his apartment window with the same kind of conviction that you see at your high school showing of Lil Abner. Its crap.

The story is a bit shaky. Its tough to keep some of the characters straight; or maybe lack of interest caused my mind to wander. One moment they are questioning some rappers about a dude that died, the next minute they are reading scripts. There are some moments of action thrown in, most notably a car chase at the end where nearly everyone in Hollywood has their life put in danger. That’s right, the only way to catch a guy who has killed a couple of gangsta rappers is by way of 1-hour car chase that costs millions of dollars and twelve innocent lives. It would seem that as a cop, your first goal is “public safety.” If you see some bad dude in an Escalade, either A) shoot out the tires, or B) call for backup, or C) wait until you find the dude later. Nope, we need a highly dangerous car chase.

And what was one of the most annoying parts in this movie? Cell Phones. Nothing says “You are in Hollywood” like having your cell phone with a super annoying ringer go off every 10 minutes… and that’s what happens in this movie. Galivan answer’s his cellphone so often that it becomes part of his character. Even during one of his stupid plays, Calden’s ringer goes off to the beat of “Funky Town”. So what does he do? He answers his phone…during a play! There is nothing more annoying than being in public with someone who’s cellphone goes off constantly with an annoying ringer… why would I want to watch characters with the same problem?

Nothing could have saved this movie. Its one of those cookie cutter movies, that has been done so often before that it is just produced because someone will consume it. Its almost as if there is a niche that has to be filled for a cop-action movie for MONTH-X, so they put together the known material, comb someone’s hair in a different direction and start slapping up movie posters. It’s a paycheck for everyone involved… the only people who lose are the people that see the movie.




1 out of 10 Jackasses
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