This “Homicide” is enough to kill you

So, is Ron Shelton ever going to make another good movie? I mean, this is the guy who wrote and directed “Bull Durham,” arguably the best baseball film ever made. Since then, however, he’s made only one or two films that are even remotely interesting. And “Hollywood Homicide” isn’t one of them.

Shelton’s latest, which played as a sneak preview tonight, is a mess. It has the usually reliable Harrison Ford playing an aging Hollywood cop named Joe Gavilan and the 20-something heartthrob Josh Hartnett playing his partner K.C. Calden. Both are investigating the shooting deaths of a hip-hop group in what seems to be their spare time, because Ford is trying to close a real-estate deal and Calden is practicing to be the next Marlon Brando (the young Brando).

The film is a mess. The plot, such as it is, gets lost in a series of chase scenes that aren’t even that good. Scenes that are played for comedy, such as a chase with crying kids in the back seat of a hijacked minivan, fall flat. Finally, the film doesn’t end so much as simply limp to a stop. And the acting by the principles is either over the top (Ford) or underplayed (Hartnett) so much that if feels, at times, somnambulistic.

It should make millions.