C&C 17: Ron Shelton’s LAPD films at CrimeReads
An anniversary that only I noticed
I’m back at CrimeReads today with an appreciation of Dark Blue and Hollywood Homicide, two movies offering wildly different perspectives on the Los Angeles Police Department, that were a) both released in 2003, and b) both directed by Ron Shelton.
When I realized that the films were marking their twentieth anniversaries, I knew that if I didn’t write the piece, then nobody would. I like both movies—one is actually James Ellroy, the other spiritually Joseph Wambaugh—but in particular I remain a staunch supporter of Hollywood Homicide. I don’t claim that it’s a great movie. I’m not even sure that it’s a good one. I do know that I found its 1980s-inspired mix of action and character comedy highly entertaining two decades ago, and still do today.
I also wanted to show a little love to a favorite filmmaker. Ron Shelton at least has a signature movie for which he will be remembered, Bull Durham (1988). And his other sports films will live on as long as guys are around giving each other a hard time. But they’ve always been more than that; they’re romantic comedies, workplace comedies, character studies. One of his best is only nominally about sports. In Cobb (1994), the on-field exploits of baseball legend Ty Cobb (a ferocious Tommy Lee Jones) ride the bench in favor of an exploration of who gets to tell the stories of so-called “great men.” The Shelton movie most deserving of rediscovery is the sadly forgotten Blaze (1989), a raucous political farce about the real-life romance between Louisiana governor Earl Long (Paul Newman) and striptease artist Blaze Starr (Lolita Davidovich). It’s worth remembering that Shelton’s first credited screenplay was Under Fire (1983), a tough-minded journalism thriller set in 1979 Nicaragua.
Read the piece and enjoy Hollywood Homicide star Harrison Ford using a phrase that was a new one on me, “I just leave it lay like Jesus flung it.”
What I’m Watching
Ford’s Hollywood Homicide costar Josh Hartnett is having a fine year, with a supporting role in Oppenheimer and another in a movie not enough people have seen. Here’s a June 2023 post from my blog about it.
Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023). “Piss-take” is too good a term to be used solely by our cousins across the pond. For me, a piss-take isn’t a parody so much as a clear-eyed version of a story, one that says, “Yeah, here’s how that would actually work.” In Guy Ritchie’s gleeful savaging of globe-trotting action thrillers, the caper springs from ignorance and is motivated by greed. His version of an elite operative isn’t a square-jawed do-gooder like Ethan Hunt, but a prickly oddball with expensive tastes. Plus he’s blessed with the singular handle of Orson Fortune, and he’s played by Jason Statham.
Fortune is tasked—only elite operatives are “tasked,” nobody else is—with recovering … well, something. The British government doesn’t know what has been stolen, only that billionaire arms trader Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, a welcome addition to the Ritchie company of players) is brokering its sale. How to access the man who has (almost) everything? Give him what he craves, the friendship of his favorite movie star. Josh Hartnett is winning as the actor strongarmed into espionage and uncertain about his ability to play the role in which he has been cast: himself. Aubrey Plaza is also on hand to mercilessly mock the gun-wielding hacker babe archetype that always turns up in these movies.
As is frequently the case with Ritchie, the entire enterprise is filled with fine clothes. Ritchie is one of the filmmakers whose work I watch for the wardrobe. See: Exhibits A and B, his still underrated The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and Colin Farrell’s coordinated track suits in The Gentlemen (2019). Operation Fortune keeps the streak alive.
My Twitter ramblings about the movie convinced Ethan Iverson to watch it, and I love his take.
Reminder
Speaking of anniversaries, you have a few days left to pick up my book Down the Hatch: One Man’s One Year Odyssey Through Classic Cocktail Recipes and Lore, for the special tenth-anniversary price of ninety-nine cents.