Cops who lost the plot

Are public servants unduly affected by their environment? This would seem to be the question at the heart of Ron Shelton’s cop comedy drama whose basic premise — veteran detective shows rookie partner the ropes — is as old as the Hollywood Hills.

Harrison Ford is Joe Gavilan, a shop-soiled, careworn detective in the Hollywood homicide division of the LAPD. Alimony payments for three ex-wives have driven him to moonlighting as a real-estate broker. His partner, KC Calden (Josh Hartnett), is a fresh-faced naif who doubles as a yoga teacher for a bevy of gorgeous wannabe starlets (from which he derives certain fringe benefits) and has secret dreams of becoming an actor.

Both are under investigation by Internal Affairs for “co-mingling funds”, though neither of them is actively corrupt. They are simply distracted detectives, with their minds only half on the job.

This is spelt out hilariously in the opening scenes when they arrive at a murder scene in a hip-hop club and Gavilan seizes the opportunity to offload a property that is crippling his finances. Calden, meanwhile (one of the few cops on the force who cannot shoot straight), attempts to lure producers and agents to his one-off performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which he will play “the Marlon Brando part”.

The field for satire on the toings and froings of Hollywood is wide open and Shelton and his coscreenwriter Robert Souza (a former LAPD detective) dutifully take aim at several targets. But Shelton, lackingthe bile of arch Hollywood satirist Blake Edwards in his prime, scatters the shot too wide.

The casting of Ford — who is looking pretty good considering his advancing years — further loosens the comic threads, which should have been pulled taut; his reactions are considered and deliberate when they need to be accelerated. Moreover, the film is awash with insider jokes that are just way beyond a non-Hollywood audience.

Walk-ons from Robert Wagner, Frank Sinatra Jr, Smoky Robinson and Gladys Knight (superb) nothwithstanding, the movie is louche and overlong.
The plot is like a badly shuffled deck of cards with the aces missing. The hip-hop club shooting leaves four dead and a missing eyewitness. The trail leads to Antoine Sartain (Isaiah Washington), the head of a rap record company, who smoothtalks his way past suspicion.

While Gavilan attempts to broker the property deal between the club owner and a Hollywood producer (Martin Landau), he is further compromised by a relationship with a well-known Hollywood madam (Lolita Davidovich). Several of these plot lines — confusing to begin with — remain unresolved, as if the screenwriters lost interest and poured everything into the wham bam denouement.

There are incidental pleasures en route. The scene with two car thieves who turn out to be repo men in the process of repossessing Gavilan’s car for late payments is a perfectly structured gag; and one of Ford’s best lines (which he almost certainly came up with himself) occurs as he is about to bed his current lover (Lena Olin): “If I take my Gingko I can still remember where I left my Viagra”. More like this would not have gone amiss.

On the debit side there are two dreadful comic miscalculations: the farcical chase across Venice bridges in pursuit of the lone eyewitness is tiresome, as is the interrogation of Gavilan and Calden by Internal Affairs which is interrupted by Gavilan’s persistently ringing mobile and his partner’s yoga exercises.