Los Angeles police Officer Max Hoover and his custom-tailored colleagues, the Hat Squad, stop at nothing to maintain control of their jurisdiction. Hoover's life takes a turn for the worse when the Hat Squad is called to investigate the death of a woman found brutally crushed in the desert.

His partners finally wheedle the truth out of him. Hoover, who's married to a sweet-natured, trusting woman, had a secret relationship with the deceased, but broke it off. He also discovers that his passionate encounters with the dead woman were secretly filmed by her homosexual friend. The Hat Squad's investigation leads to a government nuclear testing ground in the desert, which is run by a certain Gen. Thomas Timms. Hoover and his men take a drive into the federally restricted premises and discover how short their authority falls when the government gets tough.
-- Desson Howe

By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
April 26, 1996

An impressive but nonetheless obvious imitation has sprung up in the shadows of two brilliant movies-I refer to 1955's "Kiss Me Deadly" and 1974's "Chinatown."

"Mulholland Falls" looks and feels like both films-as well as the films noir of the 1940s and 1950s. Its casting has an unmistakably old-time macho muster: Nick Nolte plays a burly, no-nonsense lawman, accompanied by tough cops Michael Madsen, Chazz Palminteri and Chris Penn. Thematically, the movie (set in the 1950s) touches upon government nuclear experiments, graft and corruption in the highest places, and a detective's acutely personal involvement in the case he's investigating.

In "Mulholland Falls," the Los Angeles Police Department keeps L.A. County free of mobsters with ruthless efficiency. Nolte (as Officer Max Hoover) and his custom-tailored colleagues, the so-called Hat Squad, stop at nothing to maintain control of their jurisdiction.

We learn in the opening scene about one of their brutal specialties-pitching gangsters headlong down the craggy uprise known as Mulholland Falls. This is their vigilante equivalent of the Tarpeian rock.

Nolte's life takes a turn for the worse when the Hat Squad is called to investigate the death of a woman found brutally crushed in the desert (Jennifer Connelly). His partners finally wheedle the truth out of him. Nolte, who's married to sweet-natured, trusting Melanie Griffith, had a secret relationship with the deceased, but broke it off. He also discovers that his passionate encounters with Connelly were secretly filmed by her homosexual friend (Andrew McCarthy). But the compromising footage is missing.

The Hat Squad's investigation leads to a government nuclear testing ground in the desert, which is run by a certain Gen. Thomas Timms (John Malkovich). Nolte and his men take a drive into the federally restricted premises and discover how short their authority falls when the government gets tough.

Ultimately, "Mulholland Falls," directed by Lee Tamahori (who made the viscerally charged "Once Were Warriors"), doesn't have the impressive authority it strives for. The narrative bridge between a small-time murder in Los Angeles and a finale that brings in the feds is a forced one-as if screenwriter Pete Dexter was determined to borrow from "Kiss Me Deadly," no matter what the consequences. And as Malkovich, lazily working up his own composite of former, villainous roles, talks about "accepting the burden of leadership" by breaking the law and accepting the universal importance of human sacrifice, this movie gets a little too profound for its own good.

Yet, the movie's surface is impeccable, thanks to the impressive, grainy-and-slick work of cinematographer Haskell Wexler and production designer Richard Sylbert (who also designed "Chinatown"). Its subplot, in which Nolte has to face the moral music with Griffith, perfectly evokes the suppressive Zeitgeist of the 1950s; and the camaraderie among the four men-before the scenario's nutty, predictable outcome-is often humorous.

"Why do we always sit in the same places?" asks Palminteri, as the Hat Squad takes to the road in its Buick Roadmaster convertible. "And why are you always the the one who drives?" he asks Nolte. In the next shot, the men's regular positions are all switched around, and a grinning Palminteri is in the driver's seat.

Mulholland Falls (R) - Contains nudity, sex scenes, profanity and violence.

By Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
April 26, 1996

Nick Nolte stars as a Los Angeles detective in the '40s-flavored crime drama "Mulholland Falls," and if his hat were jammed down any tighter onto his head, you'd swear it would cut off the blood flow to his brain. Actually, a decreased oxygen supply might explain a few things-for example, why the actor gives his most monotonous, least engaging performance since he screwed on that white ten-gallon number in 1987's "Extreme Prejudice."

Actually, "Mulholland Falls," despite a muscular job of direction by Lee Tamahori ("Once Were Warriors"), is itself a sort of empty hat. Patterned after such noir classics as "The Big Sleep" and "Chinatown," the film is written in an arch, self-consciously hard-boiled style by novelist Pete Dexter that comes close to parody.

Its lead characters are a team of L.A. detectives formed especially by the chief of police (a crusty Bruce Dern) to deal with tough cases. Only slightly less brutal than the crooks they harass, these four partners-played by Nolte, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn and a hilariously chatty Chazz Palminteri-operate as if they were a law unto themselves.

The central narrative involves the misadventures of a voluptuous young party girl named Allison (Jennifer Connelly) with a powerful national security figure (John Malkovich). Unfortunately, though, it has been hammered together out of bits and pieces from so many movies that there is nothing substantial or original enough to hold our attention. And Dave Grusin's shamelessly derivative music only underscores the secondhand nature of the project.

Clearly, the filmmakers show considerable affection for the conventions of the genre, and even some pizazz in mounting them. But one of the picture's primary problems is that Dexter can't seem to figure out whether he is critical of these guys or nostalgic for the romantic era they embody. Still, the movie is least interesting when it attempts to mimic past noir masterpieces. On the other hand, it is most compelling when Tamahori continues his examination of the dynamics within groups of men-and their devastating repercussions on the lives of their women-that he began in "Once Were Warriors." But whereas "Warriors" criticized the male tendency toward violence and destruction, this film seems to want to have it both ways.

Aside from Palminteri, whose riffs about his shrink become a hilarious motif, the cast members move through the picture as though they were sleepwalking. The film's true low point, though, is the relationship between Nolte and Melanie Griffith, who portrays his faithful wife, and who has virtually nothing to do except fall to pieces when she learns of her husband's infidelities. At the beginning of the picture, she is patient and all-suffering; by the end, she's suffering, period. And either way, she's a drag.

Mulholland Falls is rated R for nudity and adult situations.