CinemaNow - Hollywood Homicide

Harrison Ford, who has been plagued by a string of box-office losers of late, is certainly receiving a lot of praise from critics for his performance in Hollywood Homicide as a veteran LAPD detective. Writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times: He slips into the role as if it were a pair of well-worn loafers, the left inherited from Peter Falk, the right from Clint Eastwood, and then proceeds, with wry nonchalance, to tap-dance, shuffle and pirouette through his loosest, wittiest performance in years. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times comments: Ford just gets better, more distilled, more laconic and more gruffly likeable, year after year. It is hard to catch him doing anything at all while he's acting, and yet whatever it is he isn't doing, it works. But most critics seem to agree that the movie itself doesn't. Writes Peter Howell in the Toronto Star: Ford is having so much fun ... it's almost enough to make the movie worth recommending for its novelty value alone. But the uneven Hollywood Homicide so consistently fails to make the most of what it has ... it's almost a criminal waste of potential. New York Post critic Megan Lehmann comments: There's little action in this snail-paced bore. You'll need a high-powered magnifying glass to spot the comedy and the buddies [the other is played by Josh Hartnett] have about as much chemistry as a pair of wet socks. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer voices a concern that box-office analysts have expressed as well -- it's tough for moviegoers to figure out what kind of a movie this is. Or, in Rickey's words, it never decides whether it's a police thriller or a comedy, so it packs heat and jokes. The gunplay diminishes the wordplay -- and vice versa.