There's an underlying theme to this movie, whether we like it or not: What happens when the good guys are indistinguishable from the bad guys?
It's a worthwhile question, and "Mulholland Falls" might be commended more highly for raising it . . . had not novelist James Ellroy posed it much more effectively years earlier in what became known as his "L.A. trilogy" series, which included (along with "L.A. Confidential") "The Black Dahlia," to which this film owes more than a slight nod for its inspiration.
As a matter of fact, it was Ellroy who first made common coinage of the term, "Hat Squad," a moniker (and even more often an epithet) used by L.A. cops to describe what has been known at various times over the past sixty-plus years as the "stakeout squad," "Metro," "Administrative Intelligence," etc. (Their habit of placing a hat or two up against the rear window of their unmarked cars to warn other officers that they were on a stakeout is still common police practice in a number of departments today. . . although those hats are now usually baseball caps.)
The movie itself, frankly, doesn't work. It creaks. Nolte is Nolte, and that's fine if your main reason for catching a flick is to watch Nick Nolte. Michael Madsen, who rarely gets so good a chance to display his acting chops as in "Reservoir Dogs," turns in his usual yeomanlike performance and ends up largely wasted. Treat Williams comes to a deserved bad end. Jennifer Connelly shows a lot of flesh, and yes, it's very nice flesh, but what of her talent? And Melanie Griffith gets to show short flashes of what she's capable of when she doesn't decide to sleepwalk through a role.
See "Mulholland Falls" on a slow Saturday night . . . if your only option is to sit up with a sick goldfish. And only if you can get someone else to pay the video rental.
It's a worthwhile question, and "Mulholland Falls" might be commended more highly for raising it . . . had not novelist James Ellroy posed it much more effectively years earlier in what became known as his "L.A. trilogy" series, which included (along with "L.A. Confidential") "The Black Dahlia," to which this film owes more than a slight nod for its inspiration.
As a matter of fact, it was Ellroy who first made common coinage of the term, "Hat Squad," a moniker (and even more often an epithet) used by L.A. cops to describe what has been known at various times over the past sixty-plus years as the "stakeout squad," "Metro," "Administrative Intelligence," etc. (Their habit of placing a hat or two up against the rear window of their unmarked cars to warn other officers that they were on a stakeout is still common police practice in a number of departments today. . . although those hats are now usually baseball caps.)
The movie itself, frankly, doesn't work. It creaks. Nolte is Nolte, and that's fine if your main reason for catching a flick is to watch Nick Nolte. Michael Madsen, who rarely gets so good a chance to display his acting chops as in "Reservoir Dogs," turns in his usual yeomanlike performance and ends up largely wasted. Treat Williams comes to a deserved bad end. Jennifer Connelly shows a lot of flesh, and yes, it's very nice flesh, but what of her talent? And Melanie Griffith gets to show short flashes of what she's capable of when she doesn't decide to sleepwalk through a role.
See "Mulholland Falls" on a slow Saturday night . . . if your only option is to sit up with a sick goldfish. And only if you can get someone else to pay the video rental.