As I will have occasion to discover in about a month, men in their sixties often find it hard to get work. The same, I think, has to be true of sometime superstar Harrison Ford, who is only about one week my junior. I can think of no other reason why he accepted the role of middle-aged LAPD cop Joe Gavilan in this film. Compared to this, as Angela points out to me, Seven Nights and Seven Days, in which Ford and Ann Heche are boringly marooned on a desert island, deserves “classic” status.

Gavilan is in what some might consider a dead-end job, and makes ends meet by moonlighting as a real-estate salesman to the rich and famous. This is necessary because he is paying alimony to one or two ex-wives, a situation roughly equivalent to indentured servitude. Some people never learn; he has a romantic interest, Ruby (Lena Olin), who makes a living on the psychic hotline, and — who knows? — may see a delightful monthly alimony check somewhere in her future. His young partner, K. C. Calden (Josh Hartnett), also moonlights, teaching tantric yoga to a bevy of delightful young … I almost said “maidens”, but this is tantric yoga. You can do this for pay? How come they never told me about this when I was in high school?

The plot, to use the term loosely, has to do with an entire rap group that is wiped out in what one might suppose to be an act by a conspiracy of music lovers, but has actually been ordered by the owner of their recording company, a very wealthy black ex-con (yeah, let’s hit all those buttons!). When I decided to write this, it took me a while to remember this, as the plot had largely faded from memory. Instead, one remembers mainly a horrific car chase through the crowded streets of Hollywood, during which Ford has one hand on the wheel of the car and the other on his cell phone as he desperately tries to salvage the sale of a house while attempting to catch the culprit.

If you watch really closely, you can see another aging and desparate star, Robert Wagner, fall into a square of wet cement in front of Graumann’s in Hollywood, to add to the comic relief, so-called.

The LAPD, it is said, withheld cooperation in the making of the recent Kurt Russell film Dark Blue, since the film tended to show Los Angeles policemen as either prejudiced or corrupt, with a couple of notable exceptions — who were (whisper the word) black. Instead, they cooperated in the making of this film, which tends to show Los Angeles policemen as, white or black, nitwits. One wonders about the LAPD’s sense of priorities.

If you want to watch it, rent the DVD at Thanksgiving and watch it over dinner. Under those circumstances, you will probably enjoy this turkey.