Mulholland Falls is a 1996 American neo-noir drama film directed by Lee Tamahori. The drama features Nick Nolte, Jennifer Connelly, Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Melanie Griffith, Treat Williams and John Malkovich.[1]
Nolte plays the head of an elite group of four Los Angeles Police Department detectives (based on the real life "Hat Squad") who are known for stopping at nothing to maintain control of their jurisdiction. Their work has the tacit approval of the LAPD Chief (Bruce Dern).
Plot
The elite "Hat Squad" members who are known to push criminals around.
In the early 1950s, a four-man squad of unorthodox LAPD detectives begins throwing its weight around by throwing Jack Flynn, a suspected organized crime figure, off a cliff on Mulholland Drive, nicknamed "Mulholland Falls" for all the men they have tossed off it.
Detective Maxwell Hoover and his three partners are called to investigate a suspicious death of a young lady found at a construction site. It turns out the victim is the beautiful Allison Pond, a once aspiring actress with whom Max had a six-month affair. The evidence shows that every bone in her body is broken. A coroner deduces that she looks like she "jumped off a cliff," although there are no cliffs nearby.
The detectives receive a film of Allison having sex in a motel room, taken by a secretly hidden camera behind a one-way mirror. Allison's gay friend Jimmy Fields admits to making this film and more, but he is murdered before he can testify.
Radioactive glass is found in Allison's foot, which leads the detectives to the Nevada Atomic Testing Site, where they illegally break in and investigate. Colonel Fitzgerald threatens to lock up the police officers, warning them that they have no authority there.
The man in the film with Allison proves to be the civilian commander of the secret base, retired General Thomas Timms, now head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Max's marriage to Kate is jeopardized by someone desperate to retrieve the film, a blackmailer who also has come into possession of film of Max and Allison having sex in the same motel room.
Further investigation leads the detectives to the "atomic soldiers" used as guinea pigs for A-Bomb tests, now dying en masse in a secret military hospital. Images of them also were captured on film made by Allison's friend.
As Max and his partner Ellery Coolidge get close to the truth, they nearly end up just like Allison, thrown out of a C-47 cargo plane. In a vicious struggle, the detectives fight for their lives during a shoot-out on the plane. Colonel Fitzgerald is thrown off by Max, falling to his death. The pilot is fatally shot but manages to crash land. Coolidge dies of a bullet wound after surviving the crash.
Max cannot reconcile with his wife at the funeral because she feels betrayed and heartbroken. At the cemetery, where he explains that his unit has been disbanded, she walks out on Max for good.
Cast
Background
The film is loosely based on LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division's "Hat Squad" (the two units were merged in 1969) in the days before the 1966 Miranda Supreme Court decision.
Film noir look
Director of Photography, Haskell Wexler, creates a look that is visually sparse and shaded to emphasize the lurid and angular which is typical of the film noir style done in the 1940s and 1950s.
Film locations
Filming locations include Los Angeles, Malibu, and Desert Hot Springs, all in California; and Wendover, Utah.
Critical reception
Katherine and Maxwell Hoover's relationship before the betrayal.
The Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, historically a fan of film noir, liked the film, and wrote, "This is the kind of movie where every note is put in lovingly. It's a 1950s crime movie, but with a modern, ironic edge: The cops are just a shade over the top, just slightly in on the joke. They smoke all through the movie, but there's one scene where they're disturbed and thoughtful, and they all light up and smoke furiously, the smoke lit by the cinematographer to look like great billowing clouds, and you smile, because you know the scene is really about itself."[2]
Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times film critic, also liked the film. Even though he writes that Mulholland Falls "goes about its business without a trace of finesse" he approved of the direction and the acting in the film, especially Jennifer Connelly's "haunting presence," writing, "Mulholland Falls combines a vivid sense of place with a visceral directorial style that fuses controlled fury onto everything it touches."[3]
In The New York Times, Janet Maslin also lauded the film, writing, "Mr. Tamahori, who gives Mulholland Falls a smashing, insidious L.A.-noir style meant to recall Chinatown, along with a high-testosterone swagger that is distinctively his own. This director's first Hollywood film has such punch, in fact, that it takes a while to realize how slight and sometimes noxious its concerns really are. But Mulholland Falls is so well cast and relentlessly stylish (thanks to some fine technical talent assembled here) that its sheer energy prevails over its shaky plot. After all, when a film maker can show Ms. Griffith contentedly reading A Farewell to Arms, there's not much he won't do. So this film has all the Chinatown staples—dangerous sex, corrupt power and a vast environment-damaging conspiracy—along with mushroom clouds, porn movies, a crash-landing airplane and many quick bursts of one-on-one violence."[4]
However, many reviewers echoed critic Peter Stack. Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, he notes, "Mulholland Falls falls flat a lot. The best of the old noir detective dramas had lively pacing and crisp tough-guy dialogue. This movie seems at times like an exercise in slow motion and in dull, cumbersome writing (the script is by novelist and former newspaper columnist Pete Dexter, who wrote the Rush screenplay)."[5]
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 25% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 25 reviews."[6]
Distribution
The producers used the following tagline when marketing the film:
- This isn't America, this is Los Angeles.
The film opened in wide release in the United States on April 26, 1996. The box office receipts were poor. The first week's gross was $4,306,221 (1,625 screens) and the total receipts for the run were $11,504,190. In its widest release the film was featured in 1,625 theaters. The film was in circulation seven weeks (45 days).[7]
Video and DVD releases
On September 18, 1996, the film was released on video by MGM/UA Home Video. A laserdisc edition was released on May 27, 1997. In addition, it was re-released on DVD on November 2, 2004 and contains the original theatrical trailer.
Soundtrack
The original score for the film was written and recorded by Dave Grusin.
An original motion picture soundtrack CD was released on May 21, 1996 on the Edel America label.
The CD contained 13 tracks including the old ballad, "Harbor Lights," by Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams, sung by crooner Aaron Neville. Neville also performs the song in the film. There were five top 10 recordings of the song in 1950.
Music in film not in soundtrack
Unsolicited awards
Wins
Noted quote
- Hoover: This is L.A., this is my town. Out here you're a trespasser; out here, I can pick you up, burn your house, fuck your wife, and kill your dog! And the only thing protecting you is if I can't find you, and I already found you!
See also
References
- ^ Mulholland Falls at the Internet Movie Database.
- ^ Ebert, Roger. The Chicago Sun-Times, film review, April 26, 1996.
- ^ Turan, Kenneth. The Los Angeles Times, Calendar Section, film review, April 26, 1996.
- ^ Maslin, Janet. The New York Times, film review, "High-Test Swagger by Burly Buddies," April 26, 1996. Last accessed: March 21, 2008.
- ^ Stack, Peter. The San Francisco Chronicle, film review, page D-3, April 26, 1996.
- ^ Mulholland Falls at Rotten Tomatoes. Last accessed: March 21, 2008.
- ^ The Numbers box office data. Last accessed: December 16, 2006.
External links
