Movie Review: Hollywood Homicide

By CHRISTOPHER J. ORTIZ
The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University
 
Hollywood Homicide/Sony Pictures

The most profitable actor of all time, Harrison Ford, teams up with heartthrob, Josh Hartnett, in this cop-buddy flick but instead of mixing up the buddy-cop formula, Homicide simply plays by the dull rules of mismatched, polar-opposite cops who try throughout the whole movie to understand and identify each other.
Ford plays a veteran Hollywood detective, Joe Gavilian, who is paying off three ex-wives and is trying to make it a day without his car being repossessed and trying to close a real estate deal between Master P and Martin Landau.
Hartnett plays K.C. Calden, a rookie (no way!) who has aspirations to become an actor, a move Harrison's character doesn't "get". When they are not busy with real estate deals, rehearsing script lines or making out with beautiful women, they're suppose to be on the case of the murder of four rappers who got shot or something....doesn't matter, they might as well be chasing down a group of guys selling donuts without charging for extra sprinkles, the point of the movie is to laugh at the absurdity between the two main characters, it works at times but usually I found myself finishing the punch lines before Harrison or Hartnett had the chance to.
The movie's best scenes are when Harrison plays against his typical typecast, instead of the dashing hero who is never seen without his hat and always looks dashing when saving the day, the audience gets to see Harrison play a character down on his luck, drinking scotch home alone and answering his cell phone when it rings an old-school Motown jingle... since when does Indiana Jones carry a cell phone? As for Hartnett, well, in every scene his hair looks like he just walked through a wind tunnel but he holds his own to the great Harrison.
Homicide hopes people will be satisfied seeing Harrison and Harnett on the screen together at the same time, and for the most part it's enough, but would it hurt to mix up the old cop-buddy formula?

C+