Columbia Tri-Star Entertainment (DVD)
Fans of Han Solo will recognize the cynical hero who continues to delight us with that quirky grin. Trade outer space for California, though, and this movie could not get any weirder -- even if R2-D2 showed up. The major characters struggle with double identities because their present fate constantly lures them to tackle the unknown. Even the landscape proves deceptive -- the famous sign above MGM adds another word right before our eyes.

But the astonishing surprise in store for viewers could not be more ironic: this film cel-ebrates exactly those components of modern life that drive every one of us completely nuts! Hollywood Homicide may be the only film to date to benefit from the jing-a-ling of cellular phone.

Poor police detective/real estate broker Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford)! His real estate career teeters on a high-rise even as he tracks rappers from hell for the police department. In the midst of life-and-death chase scenes -- jing-a-ling -- there it goes again.

His young partner, K.C. Calden (Josh Hartnett), faces a similar predicament. A budding actor, Calden assumes every call could be his agent with the role of his dreams. In Hollywood, it seems, a madam of the worst kind (Lolita Davidovich) also arranges her appointments by no other means. So, the plot gyrates into a corkscrew with more turns than any hero can race around without losing his cool -- just like the rest of us.

Waiting for Ford in the finale lies the modern version of "The Lady and the Tiger": A New Age visionary (Lena Olin) and an Internal Affairs officer (Bruce Greenwood). If the visionary and the IA officer didn't share a connection, our hero just might sell a property before he gets arrested. Look for one long speech on "co-mingling" that blows double entendres right out of the water. Politicized investigations, rappers, and New Age sex and violence all take big-time hits in this satirical romp.

Holding this controversial content together, one virtual father and son explore the meaning of blood relationships. The good taste of director Ron Shelton keeps the blood from spurting very far. Shelton also centers the drama on human feelings that hunger for meaning in the midst of chaos -- especially the chaos wrought by the telecommunications industry. Here, words achieve importance because they arrive scrambled and misunderstood. Cel phones make sure we catch at least half of our messages. For this story, those calls drive the plot squarely into survivable wreckage. See it -- and take notes!

Meg Curtis

Meg Curtis leads a triple life as a creative writer, a college professor and a medievalist. From western New York, she gained insights into wildlife and spiritualism. In Appalachia, she learned to love America's oldest mountains. She has settled happily, with three southern cats and a basset hound named Mr. Willoughby, in Freemansburg, Pennsylvania.

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