It's the fifties. The streets of L.A. are run by a hard-nosed elite squad of the LAPD who kick around the undesirables with the approval of their hierarchy and little, if any, regard for the law. Max Hoover (Nick Nolte), the leader of the pack, is a Jack Gittes type with violent mood swings but, would you have guessed, a tender core. When a gorgeous brunette (Jennifer Connelly, yelp) is found dead, Hoover is faced with his secret love life. In order to solve the case, he will have to come clean... Mulholland Falls is an expensive-looking go at a well-rehearsed genre that started with Chandler and had its heyday with Polanski's never equalled Chinatown (1974). The sets in this modern retro noir are lavish, with a special mention for the countless exteriors, helping to create a more or less credible atmosphere. The acting and dialogues are, well, appropriate though characteristically over the edge, which is likely to turn off some viewers but is a seemingly inevitable corollary to the species. So where's the hitch? Of all things, the plot stinks. When, in Chinatown, Robert Towne's screenplay skillfully interweaves its back story (a real estate scam) with the main intrigue (murder case), solidly anchoring the film in real-life history, Mulholland Falls clumsily attempts to construct a link with 1950s nuclear bomb testing in the Californian desert and fails miserably in doing so. The result is more of a hoax than a story, which has the wild bunch cross swords with the Atomic Energy Commission and half the US Army, culminating in a frighteningly moronic ending and a no less far-fetched resolve. Mulholland Falls (cryptically named after a minor incident in the film) is all surface and no depth, which is a shame considering the budget and cast at its disposal.
Review of Mulholland Falls
