The plot is suitably, perhaps predictably intricate. One bad cop (Bruce Greenwood) is after Gavilan's badge; another (Dwight Yoakam) may have been involved in the murder of Calden's father, who was also a police officer. The various record-industry and law-enforcement bad guys are linked in a brutal conspiracy that you will unravel well before Gavilan and Calden do.
But the plot is not really the point. It is, instead, the hammered together frame that contains a motley collage of riffs, sketches and variations on some of Shelton's favorite themes, including the absurdity and nobility of manhood, the sex appeal of mature women and the varieties of interracial and intergenerational misunderstanding.
There are scenes that appear to have been as much fun to write and to shoot as they are to watch: a foot and pedal-boat chase across a muddy canal; parallel interrogations derailed by yoga poses and ringing cellphones; and anything calling for the presence of Lena Olin (as Gavilan's lover, a radio psychic) or Lolita Davidovich (as a madam).
Really, though, there are too many deft grace notes and underplayed jokes to take in at a single viewing. Shelton is a master of the telling, offhand detail. Gavilan's cellphone plays the opening bars of My Girl, a choice that marks him as an old-school sentimentalist. Later, he dances alone to The Tracks of My Tears, prefiguring an astounding cameo from Smokey Robinson himself, playing an impatient cabdriver.
Gavilan's protestations that he just doesn't get hip-hop may be stiff-necked Motown nostalgia or Columbo-style guilelessness. Or it may be, as Calden points out, that he's not supposed to get it. Shelton does, however, selecting a fine sampling of East and West Coast beats for the soundtrack and bringing on rap world figures like Kurupt and Master P in supporting roles. (Something of an old-school soul man himself, Shelton also contrives to have Gladys Knight answer a door when Gavilan knocks on it.)
A less confident, less devil-may-care filmmaker might have wrapped it all up with a parade of revelations and just deserts, but Shelton seems to trust his audience to figure out the plot points and so treats us, at the end, to a long, crazy car chase, a carnival of slapstick mayhem complete with real estate negotiations, dueling TV helicopters and Robert Wagner splattered with wet concrete as he prepares to christen his star on the Walk of Fame outside Grauman's Chinese Theater.
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