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Hollywood homicide (12A)

Dir: Ron Shelton

With: Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett, Lena Olin, Martin Landau, Lolita Davidovich, Isaiah Washington

By and large, Hollywood hasn't

quite accommodated the mobile telephone. It's an inconveniently convenient invention, the existence of which scuppers a lot of standard plot devices. It's no longer convincing for characters to get stranded without any means of communication, or to miss a crucial romantic rendezvous by seconds - and the old ''I can't get a signal'' get-out can only work so many times.

Hollywood Homicide strives to redress the balance by having its characters permanently affixed to their mobile apparatus. More realistic, perhaps, but the problem is that the repeated bleating of a mobile is as irritating on-screen as off. To add cultural insult to aural injury, Harrison Ford's character uses The Temptations' My Girl as a ringtone. I have a feeling that the first few bars of that song might now have been ruined for me forever.

It's one of several slights against Motown Records that writer/director Ron Shelton incorporates into Hollywood Homicide. He's probably under the impression that he's paying tribute - but casting Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight in cameo roles in a film this bad is like enlisting a team of neurosurgeons to help you pick

your nose.

Also, what's the relevance? Motown's glory days took place in Detroit, not Hollywood. Perhaps Shelton - director of Bull Durham and White Men Can't Jump - just has sympathy for those whose best work is behind them.

Ford plays Joe Gavilan, a weary LA cop who moonlights as a real estate broker. His partner is callow rookie KC, played by Josh Hartnett, whose sideline interest is acting. The film opts not to take issue with their lack of commitment to policing; indeed, it positively condones it, inviting us to chuckle warmly as Gavilan takes a break from chasing a murder suspect to close a deal on that infernal mobile phone. After all, in a venal, back-stabbing, dog-eat-dog world, a man's got to take what he can get - right? And if a suspect should fall off a roof, or some civilians should get caught in the crossfire in an ill-disciplined shoot-out, that's just the way

it goes.

What's most surprising about Hollywood Homicide isn't that it's awful - Harrison Ford's choices have been so wayward of late that he's starting to serve as a useful barometer for badness, and Josh Hartnett has singularly failed to prove that there's a brain behind that bone structure. What's surprising, and colossally depressing, is the contempt for all humanity that pervades the project.

Our heroes are selfish, double-dealing, and stupid. Our villains are - well - black, and subject to every half-witted stereotype that blackness could possibly trigger. Women are interchangeable simpering sex objects, or conniving harlots. Even Lena Olin's earthy psychic (an unfortunate participant in an acutely embarrassing sex scene, involving Ford, a blindfold, and a doughnut) is a fraud, cheerfully admitting: ''Sometimes I toss a coin. Sometimes I just make shit up.''

At one stage, during one of

several mind-numbing and ill-conceived car chases, KC commandeers a vehicle with two small children in the back. He drives like a lunatic; their hysterical screams are used as comic currency. He drives into a wall - but goodness, what hilarity! It's a fake, part of a movie set. A film that will sink this low for thrills is in dire, dire straits.

Elsewhere, KC observes an autopsy - and if children in peril are legitimate laugh fodder, don't think that horribly burned corpses will be spared.

I'd love to suppose that this is all a sophisticated jibe on the soulless vapidity of Hollywood, but that would be crediting

this film with an intelligence it never musters.

It's just a horrible, heartless mess. As if the central plotline - about the murder of some rappers in a Hollywood nightclub - wasn't weak

enough, there's a plethora of messy, under-explained sub-plots; and the chaotic editing style doesn't do much to clarify things.

The action sequences drag on and on, without pulling any impressive visuals out of the hat to justify themselves. Hollywood Homicide is also the worst example I have yet seen (and there's a lot of competition) of Hollywood's lazy, cannibalistic appropriation of black hip-hop culture to add a sheen of credibility to an otherwise creatively bankrupt film. To try and piggyback on hip-hop cool whilst portraying all your black characters as brainless thugs or corrupt fat cats is just plain rude. The film's attitude in this area is summed up when a black record label executive is shown a house by Gavilan, who proudly notes that there's a library. ''I don't need no 'liberry'. I need a pool,'' drawls the buyer. Well, of course.

It's actually fairly hard to imagine any of the dolts who populate this film finding

much use for a library, but Shelton's certainly not going to let us go thinking that a black man might be caught reading anything other than a court summons.

After his underwhelming turns in What Lies Beneath and K19: The Widowmaker, and now this unqualified turkey, Harrison Ford had better hope that Indiana Jones 4 has the magic touch required to restore his credibility. As for Hartnett, it's time to sack the agent - or at least start reading the scripts.

GH

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Also showing petites coupures (15) Dir: Pascal Bonitzer With: Daniel Auteuil,

Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier This is the sort of arch,

self-satisfied French ensemble comedy that doesn't quite translate. Daniel

Auteuil plays Bruno, a journalist who has lost faith in his Communist ideals,

and betrayed his wife for a vapid young mistress. Asked by his politician

uncle to deliver an important message to an old comrade, Bruno makes a confused

quest punctuated by encounters with acquaintances old and new. The film toys

with weighty concepts - the relevance of being a Communist in the post-war

world, and juxtaposing revolutionary attitudes with distinctly bourgeois

lifestyles. But on the whole, its brittle, playful atmosphere precludes

emotional identification.

Bruno is an unsympathetic hero whose behaviour towards his countless female

conquests is little short of brutal; and yet the women aren't treated with much

empathy either, being by and large pushovers and hypocrites. So how does

Bonitzer expect to engage us in the petty troubles of their lives? The film's

only pure pleasure is Kristin Scott Thomas, as the enigmatic married woman who

tries to enlist Bruno as a contract killer. Not only is her perverse, fragile

character the most interesting, but she looks breathtaking throughout. In a

film this shallow and glossy, surface pleasures are perhaps the most we can

hope for. MAN OF THE YEAR (15) Dir: Jose Henrique Fonseca With: Murilo

Benicio, Claudia Abreu, Natalia Lage, Jorge Doria A super-charged, kinetic

thriller from first-time Brazilian director Jose Henrique Fonseca.

Good-humoured layabout Maiquel loses a bet and is required to bleach

his hair. With his new image comes a run-in with the local crime boss - which

unleashes Maiquel's inner macho man. Before he knows it, he's murdered the

gangster, become a local hero, and his fellow townsfolk start commissioning him

to settle scores on their behalf. Like many films about street violence, this

suffers from swooning at the glamour of the very lifestyle it affects to abhor

- but moral considerations aside, it's an immensely stylish and intoxicating

ride. It honours the recent tradition of visually ravishing Brazilian movies;

its eye-smarting, over-saturated palette playing up the story's frenetic,

cartoonish elements. More stylish than substantial, then; but a witty,

well-executed debut, and a creditable addition to Brazil's increasingly vibrant

national cinema. THE LIZZIE McGUIRE MOVie (U) Dir: Jim Fall With: Hilary Duff,

Adam Lamberg, Hallie Todd, Yani Gellman Another big-screen

vehicle for a US tweenie star built on the blinding realisation that it's

better to market teen and youth products to their own age groups, rather than

the leering dirty-mac market still dominated by Britney Spears. Thus, films

like this and What A Girl Wants eschew queasy sexual suggestiveness for squeaky

clean comic book wish fulfilment, squarely pitched at the kind of dreamy

teenage girls who used to make do with photo stories and Judy Blume novels.

Duff's Lizzie McGuire, a middle school graduate, goes on a trip to Rome and is

mistaken for one half of Italy's premier pop duo. The other half of the act is

sweet-talking Paulo - a pubescent embodiment of every sleazy holiday Lothario

ever depicted on screen - whose wiles inevitably stir Lizzie's girlish heart.

There's little here for grown-ups or thinking teenagers; but Duff is a

genuinely vibrant presence. Her infectious, guileless smile

is almost enough to make you forget this is a cynical bid to charm our children

out of their hard-won paper-round money. Jeepers Creepers 2 (15) Dir: Victor

Salva With: Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Travis Schiffner, Nicki Lynn Aycox The

first Jeepers Creepers marshalled horror cliches with a certain amount of

verve, and genuine suspense, at least until it revealed its silly-looking,

rubber-faced monster. This time, a busload of suitably obnoxious teens get

stranded in Nowheresville, USA, right around the time the Creeper goes on his

23-yearly feeding frenzy. Given he's supposed to be stitched together from

random body parts, it's appropriate he resembles an amalgamation of horror

icons - Freddie Kruger's skin complaint, Hannibal Lecter's breathing

difficulties, and lots of moist, pulsing openings reminiscent of the Alien.

Ugly, yes; scary, no. Salva does himself no favours with a blatantly

ludicrous script, which relies on one of the kids having a visionary dream so

that the plot can be explained. Finally, the effects are woeful; even when the

Creeper isn't flitting across the picture like a computer glitch, this looks

oddly blurry and unfocused. The current glut of bad retro horror only proves

that referencing the stalk-and-slash classics is no substitute for genuine

ideas, or a persuasive storyline.