Mulholland Falls
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| Mulholland Falls | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover of Muholland Falls |
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| Directed by | Lee Tamahori |
| Produced by | Lili Fini Zanuck Richard D. Zanuck |
| Written by | Story: Pete Dexter Floyd Mutrux Screenplay: Pete Dexter |
| Music by | Dave Grusin |
| Distributed by | MGM |
| Release date(s) | April 26, 1996 |
| Running time | 107 |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Mulholland Falls is a neo-noir 1996 film directed by Lee Tamahori. Nick Nolte plays Max Hoover, the head of an elite group of four Los Angeles cops (based on the real life "Hat Squad") who stop at nothing to maintain control of their jurisdiction.
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[edit] Plot
This film starts in the late 1940s with the squad of super-corrupt LAPD detectives who throw a suspected organized crime figure off a cliff on Mulholland Drive, which has been nicknamed "Mulholland Falls" for all the men they threw off it. (There is no waterfall.) Later on the men are called to investigate a suspicious death of a young lady, an aspiring actress with whom Max had an affair, Allison Pond (Jennifer Connelly), whose body is found at a construction site. The evidence shows she fell from a great height, perhaps off of a cliff or from an airplane. 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. The detectives find film of Allison having sex taken by a secretly hidden camera behind a one way mirror. Allison's gay friend tells of making the films, but is murdered before he can testify, apparently by a conspiracy. The man in the films proves to be the civilian (former general) commander of the secret base, Thomas Timms, a "mad scientist" played by John Malkovich. Further investigations lead the detectives to find out about the "atomic soldiers", who were used as guinea pigs for A-Bomb tests and who were now dying en masse in a secret military hospital. The two leads get close to the truth and almost wind up just like Allison, being thrown out of a DC-3 by murderous military officers intent on keeping everything secret. The detectives fight for their lives during a shootout on the plane they were to be thrown from and with the pilot fatally shot, crash land. Detective Elleroy Coolidge dies of a bullet wound on the ground after surviving the crash. Max cannot reconcile with his wife at the funeral, because she feels betrayed and heartbroken after having been anonymously sent another surreptitously-taken sex film, this one involving Allison and Max. She leaves Max for good and alone in Forrest Lawn Cemetery.
[edit] Reaction
Most critics panned the film. The look of the film was praised, including the work of cinematographer Haskell Wexler, but the film was criticized for the misuse of a talented cast and a confusing plot.
In addition, the only relationship to the true-life "Hat Squad" was the name. Mulholland Falls calls the squad of cops charged with suppressing organized crime the "Hat Squad", but the detail responsible for combating organized crime was in fact the Intelligence Division, run by Captain Jim Hamilton from the late '40s through the early '60s, when it was taken over by future LAPD Chief Daryl Gates.
LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division's (the two units were merged in 1969) "Hat Squad" were in real life the elite of the least-corrupt detective division in any major city in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. While many of their tactics would not pass legal muster today, during the years of the "Hat Squad" their tactics and tenchiques were not only legal, but relatively tame when compared to those of more "mature" police departments in the Midwest and Northeast. These were the days before the Miranda decision and "reading him his rights" came along. To portray "Hat Squad" members committing murder is pure fabrication, and makes the film stumble in unlikelyhood.
Peter Stack, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, 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 Pete Dexter, who wrote the Rush screenplay).
[edit] Cast
Some of the cast included:
- Nick Nolte as Maxwell Hoover
- Jennifer Connelly as Allison Pond
- Chazz Palminteri as Elleroy Coolidge
- Michael Madsen as Eddie Hall
- Chris Penn as Arthur Relyea
- Melanie Griffith as Katherine Hoover
- Treat Williams as Colonel Nathan Fitzgerald
- Daniel Baldwin as McCafferty
- Andrew McCarthy as Jimmy Fields
- John Malkovich as General Thomas Timms
- Kyle Chandler as Captain
In addition, there are cameo appearances from actors Bruce Dern, William L. Petersen and Rob Lowe.
[edit] Quotes
- Lieutenant Maxwell Hoover: This isn't America, Jack. This is L.A.
- General Timms: Some people die before their time so that others can live. It's a cornerstone of civilization.
- 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!
- Hoover: We go where the case takes us.
- Fitzgerald: Not if it takes you here you don't.
- Coolidge: Max, I'm shot.
- Hoover: Oh my God. Oh, no. Oh, no.
- Coolidge: My psychiatrist is not gonna like this, Max.
[edit] Taglines
- The power of love vs. the love of power.
- This isn't America, this is Los Angeles.
[edit] Trivia
- The film was shot on location in Los Angeles, California and Wendover, Utah.
