What Went Wrong: Hollywood Homicide
By Shalimar Sahota
June 7, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Hollywood Homicide is as straightforward and cliché as they come. Given what one expects from a buddy-cop movie, it’s thin on laughs and action. There’s no suspense, or any major twists. In fact, it’s more about cops focused on their own problems rather than solving a case.
After a group of rappers known as H2O Klick are shot at a nightclub, Hollywood homicide detectives Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford) and K.C. Calden (Josh Hartnett) are both assigned to the case. Their investigation has them discover that when the rappers tried to break out on their own, their boss, record producer Antoine Sartain (Isaiah Washington) had been embezzling money, and to prevent them from speaking out, Sartain ended up having them killed.
Produced by Revolution Studios and distributed by Columbia Pictures, Hollywood Homicide had a production budget of $75 million. It opened on June 13, 2003 and charted at #5 with a disappointing $11.1 million on its opening weekend. It took just $30.9 million at the US box office. International grosses accounted for $20.2 million, totalling to a worldwide gross of $51.1 million. The film was a flop. There’s a lot wrong with Hollywood Homicide, so it’s not hard to see why.
The shooting of rappers that sets the whole thing in motion just isn’t strong enough. It sounds rather mundane, especially when compared to the case Gavilan and K.C. start investigating at the end of the film, which seems far more interesting (“We have a body and a half with some pieces missing”). I imagine that part of the reason is so that more time can be spent on the personal issues of the characters Joe Gavilan and K.C. Calden. Unfortunately, these aren’t very interesting either.
Gavilan wants to go into real estate. He’s struggling to sell a house and also has internal affairs investigating him for, “commingling funds” (an unnecessary subplot). K.C. wants to be an actor and teaches Yoga on the side. While they would obviously be happier doing other things, it’s clear that neither of them want to be with the police anymore. K.C. spells it out effortlessly when he says, “I don’t think I want to be a cop anymore.” The crime here is selling an action movie where the two lead police detectives aren’t even interested in their jobs, and they treat the case like it’s a burden. With that in mind, why should we invest our time in watching them?
Robert Souza, a former police detective at the LAPD, had worked with writer/director Ron Shelton as an advisor on his previous film, the gritty police drama Dark Blue. So Shelton brought him along as a co-writer for Hollywood Homicide, incorporating his experience from real-life events. One of those includes a real-estate subplot.
As well as being a police detective, Gavilan boasts about being a real estate broker, and slips it in at almost every opportunity, even to a group of strangers on an elevator. It turns into a wastefully lengthy subplot that fails to add anything. Its inclusion only came about because Souza also happened to moonlight as a real estate broker while he was working for the LAPD. Just because he did it in real life doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing to include in the film.
The film stretches the realms of believability when Gavilan and K.C. use a psychic, Gavilan’s girlfriend Ruby (Lena Olin), to find the whereabouts of Sartain. According to Souza, the police would actually sometimes take psychics with them on cases, hence its inclusion. Upon locating Sartain, the film then goes into a final chase and shootout routine that lasts about 20 minutes. It’s a shame that it’s just so conventional and dull.
There were differing TV spots, one selling a comedy, another selling an action drama, which most likely confused potential audiences as to just what kind of film Hollywood Homicide was. Then there’s the woeful tagline. “When time’s running out, one shot is all you get.” It sounds like it came from the randomly generated tagline creator since it could go with just about any other movie (action or not).
There are a few brief moments of wit and craziness, which looks like there was potential for a quirky thriller, and also makes me believe that perhaps the film looked better on paper. There is a laugh to be had at the sight of Gavilan eating a doughnut while making love to his girlfriend, as well as his line about paying the mortgage (“I just wanna pay the mortgage and escape with my dick still attached to my body”). Lou Diamond Phillips has a great cameo as a vice cop undercover in drag, but it’s a shame he’s only in the one scene. K.C. commandeers a car that still has a mother and her two children in the back. These moments are few and far between, for just when it looks like it might be going somewhere good it always reverts back to mainstream mediocrity.
Both Ford and Hartnett signed on before even reading a script. They both totally let themselves go in an effort to produce cheap laughs. Hartnett recites A Streetcar Named Desire first thing in the morning, and towards the end tells two young children that they will die… eventually. Ford gets angry with almost everyone he meets and rides a pink girly bicycle. All selling points supposedly unique enough to include in the trailer, but also end up coming across as slightly cringe-worthy and reasons to avoid the film.
Since the turn of the new millennium, those looking for something similar have been viewing the likes of The Shield and CSI on TV. Although lacking in the comedy, some episodes are good enough to keep audiences away from the big screen, which could also explain the low turnout for Hollywood Homicide. Coincidentally the film plays more like a pilot for a TV series that’ll probably only last for one season. It’s really very forgettable.
Hollywood Homicide just had a "seen-it-all-before" look to it, and failed to add anything new to what’s already out there. Hell, even the Lethal Weapon movies from yesteryear are funnier and they only became comical with the sequels. Since its release, there have been very few original action-comedy, buddy-cop movies. 2010 saw Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, which didn’t work, and Adam McKay’s The Other Guys, which just about got it right. As a tired sub-genre that could do with some rejuvenation, it’s much more likely that studios simply won’t greenlight one in the future.