Mulholland Falls

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: D     Film: B-

 

 

After a few decades, Hollywood finally became bold enough to try to duplicate the success and feel of Roman Polanski’s 1974 masterpiece Chinatown, especially after its fascinating and belated sequel The Two Jakes (1990, reviewed elsewhere on this site).  When that did not fare very well commercially, two films surfaced that dared to try to imitate the film more directly.  One was the acclaimed but overrated Curtis Hanson adaptation of James Elroy’s L.A. Confidential (1997) that earned some box office and even more awards and positive press.  The other was Lee Tamahari’s Mulholland Falls from the year before.

 

In this portrait of Los Angeles corruption from yesteryear 1953, a group of well-dressed tough guys (Nick Nolte, Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn) go around dispensing their lawless version of the law on certain targets (including William Petersen in a brief appearance), but a new murder case that gets personal crosses the U.S. Government’s then-new nuclear testing.  The further the tough guys get, the tougher it even gets for them.  Unfortunately, the film starts dropping off and shifts to a more conventional focus by the last quarter of the film, miles away from any of the edge or bite of Polanski’s film.

 

Even Richard Sylbert, who did the production design on Chinatown, does the same here.  However, that is the strongest similarity between the two films, sadly.  You do get a good lead cast, plus respectable additional support from Treat Williams, Andrew McCarthy, Jennifer Connelly, Louise Fleischer, Rob Lowe, Bruce Dern and especially John Malkovich, who almost upstages the whole cast as the most interesting character in the film.  Too bad the film was not more about him.

 

Another problem is that we pretty much know more than the characters, too much so as a matter of fact, but Tamahari does it with some edge and believability.  To bad the Pete Dexter screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Floyd Mutrux, is ultimately just too routine.  Nevertheless, you can see the caliber of cast that signed for it, so you can see that it was trying to be ambitious.  Once again, challenging classics is a loosing proposition.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is not bad, from a decent video master, which used a film with no problems.  The pan & scan version on the flipside of the DVD is lame.  Color is consistent, but there are some issues with fine detail.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 mix is not bad, because this film was exclusively a DTS theatrical release, so why was this not issued as a DTS DVD?  The fact of the matter is that this film was released in the original full kilobits-per-second DTS at the 1,509 rate in 20 bits, in the now-dead 12” LaserDisc format, for which this DVD’s Dolby cannot hope to match by a longshot.  MGM has barely done DTS on DVD, though that will change as DTS supporter Sony absorbs the company, and especially as the new HD disc formats arrive.  The film was issued with the idea of pushing the advantages of DTS and it does still hold up as a solid early mix.  Dave Grusin’s score is derivative of… you guessed it.  The only extra is the trailer, which is oddly at 2.35 X 1.  A decent basic DVD at best.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo