`MULHOLLAND' FALLS SHORT ON SUBSTANCE.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Critic

If it were a better movie, ``Mulholland Falls'' might have grabbed some attention as a kind of belated bugle call for the bad old days, when guys like police detective Max Hoover (Nick Nolte) could bully, maim, murder and womanize their way into hero status, and nobody questioned it.

At the outset, Nolte and his squad of thick-necked, husky-voiced lieutenants (Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen and Christopher Penn) hurl a known gangster down a cliffside rather than tangle with the cumbersome legal process. They then drive down Mulholland to taunt his mangled, still-breathing body. And these are the good guys.

Indeed, the movie seems dedicated to reviving some lamentable notions of masculinity, and paying homage to a bygone era when men were men and women were spectators, and perhaps there's an underserved audience out there longing to escape into just such a movie. Anything's possible.

But this is a poor climate in which to release a movie that celebrates the exploits of thuggish, above-the-law cops, particularly within the LAPD. And it's never a good time for the kind of aggressive homophobia the cops display toward the movie's gay character, a rather pathetic voyeur called Jimmy (Andrew McCarthy).

In trying to design a murder mystery around the Hat Squad, a gang of overdressed real-life LAPD detectives who gained notoriety in the 1950s for solving problems the quick and nasty way, the filmmakers have given themselves problems they don't solve well or easily.

Nolte's Max Hoover is the veteran of the squad, a wheezing, chain-smoking big guy who smashes and bashes his way through any obstacles in his path, perhaps out of guilt that he's been boffing a big-chested babe (Jennifer Connelly) while his trusting wife, Katherine (Melanie Griffith), waits at home with a book (at least it's Hemingway, rather than Hints From Heloise).

Not long after Hoover breaks it off with his popular paramour (she seems to be a career pleasure-giver), she's found murdered in the oddest way - her shattered corpse is found punched deep into the mud at a home-building site in the Valley.

Nobody can figure out how she got that way, but the existence of some amateur films taken of the girl with her lovers sends Hoover into a deep sweat.

Then the coroner comes up with evidence suggesting that the deceased apparently was gamboling barefoot at a radioactive nuclear test site (don't ask) shortly before her demise, so the nattily suited boys stuff themselves and their hats into their '49 Buick Roadmaster convertible and speed on out to a government base to confront Gen. Timms (John Malkovich), who's head of the Atomic Energy Commission and one of the girl's former lovers.

``Did you know the atom itself is mostly empty space, tiny fragments of matter whirling at such high speed that they create the impression of solidarity?'' queries the ailing military man.

He might as well be describing the plot of ``Mulholland Falls,'' except that under Lee Tamahori's turgid direction, screenwriter Pete Dexter's particles aren't whirling fast enough to conceal the story's gaping holes and inconsistencies.

To describe them would be to give away too much - and to be sure, the movie comes up with at least one high-flying and effective action sequence. But for the most part, this is all a rather ham-handed attempt to prop up a story concept that was addlebrained to begin with.

Tamahori, a New Zealander whose direction of his debut film ``Once Were Warriors'' earned him international acclaim, here seems overawed by the conventions of the period American detective drama, and the clumsily paced movie chokes on atmosphere and reverence, while Dave Grusin's sentimental score blares in the foreground.

Nolte gives a deeply internal performance that is effective when he's not leaning too heavily on his hat and cigarette for props, and Griffith, in a passive role with little screen time, makes a surprisingly strong impression.

Others, including the overagitated McCarthy, fare less well under Tamahori's apparently scattershot direction. Malkovich makes the movie interesting, simply because his choices are so surprising, but his fey, intellectual tics and eccentricities seem unlikely in a military general. Aside from the entertaining Palminteri, the other name actors have little to do (Hat Squad or not, this isn't an ensemble drama), and their superfluous casting seems typical in an era of overspending as an attempt at box-office insurance.

THE FACTS The film: ``Mulholland Falls'' (R, violence, sex).

The stars: Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, John Malkovich, Michael Madsen, Christopher Penn, Treat Williams, Jennifer Connelly, Andrew McCarthy, Bruce Dern.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Lee Tamahori. Written by Pete Dexter. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck. Released by MGM.

Running time: One hour, 47 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two stars