Dear Harrison Ford,
By the time you receive this letter, you’ll already be dead.
Well, at least your career and soul have gone bye-bye. But I would have to think the desperation of signing on for Hollywood Homicide could only come from someone whose brain had checked out as well.
It was sad enough watching you attempt career suicide in Six Days, Seven Nights, Random Hearts and K-19: The Widowmaker. At least in this vanity project, you’re not wearing an earring or talking like Boris Badenov.
But you do show your wispy, white-haired old-man chest again, and that needs to stop. Remember, that truly weird, unfunny scene where your character Joe Gavilan and his psychic girlfriend (Lena Olin) make love while you’re wearing cop shades and biting into a donut? I only wish I was kidding.
Come on. You and Josh Hartnett as two cops investigating a rap-industry murder while moonlighting as real-estate agents, yoga instructors and actors? Please. Watching this movie is like biting into burnt toast for two hours. Nothing happens for at least an hour-and-a-half, unless you count your character’s endlessly ringing cell phone, which has ruined “My Girl” for me for the rest of my life. Thanks, man.
The action here is listless and random, the sloppy slapstick has no screwball energy, the casting of your co-stars is strange and thrown-together and, worst of all, you and Hartnett have as much chemistry as Tom Green and Drew Barrymore did.
OK, maybe it’s not entirely your fault. Director/co-writer Ron Shelton probably didn’t let you in on the fact this is less a movie than an apologetic make-good for the whipping he gave the L.A.P.D. in February’s intense drama Dark Blue. Guess he’ll have to keep telling people he’s sorry, huh?
But lest I forget my focus, let’s get back to blaming you. It’s not funny when you’re mugging with Master P., riffing with Lou Diamond Phillips as a cop dressed in drag or thrusting your pelvis in an interrogation room. Hey, at least it’s not as weird as the sex donut, right?
OK, so I did laugh once at you. Hartnett’s K.C. gives your character tips on acting with intensity and conviction. I was laughing so hard I snorted, and people were looking at me funny.
Some advice to you — unless it has the words “Indiana” and “Jones” in the title, we’re not interested. But after watching you “fight” in this film, maybe even then we’re not interested.
Watching you flail about during that rooftop fight was distressing. And it’s pretty sad when you need an obvious stunt double for a scene when you’re kicking someone in the rear. (OK, OK, so I laughed twice. Does it really count, though, if it wasn’t you? Sorry, such existentialism probably hurts your brain.)
What really hurts my brain is that you apparently took a pass on the Michael Douglas role in Traffic but still sign on for tripe like this. What kind of food is Calista Flockhart feeding — or, rather, not feeding — you over there?
OK, so you’re not actually dead. But before you make that next bad move, consider this sad hypothetical: If you died tomorrow, your last cinematic appearance would be in the worst movie of 2003 so far and, probably, one of the worst in the last five years.
Sincerely,
Nick Rogers