Before he became the critics’ darling as director of such films as “The Town” and “Argo,” Ben Affleck’s career was in a serious funk. Coming off the underwhelming “Daredevil” and JLo-paired disaster of “Gigli,” it looked like his legacy was to be that tall guy who used to hang with Matt Damon. So what better role for a faded semi-star looking for a break than to play a faded semi-star looking for a break, as George Reeves, the star of the 1950’s tv version of “Superman.” A once promising actor prominently featured in “Gone With The Wind” turned case of premature Hollywood burnout and apparent suicide, Reeves offered Affleck the perfect mirror role, descended from the heights to wear a girdle and cape for the screaming kiddies.
“Hollywoodland” (2006) basically asks, did Reeves, feeling typecast as Superman, actually kill himself, or was there something seamier at hand? Was he perhaps done in by his jilted lover's husband? Or maybe it was his mistress? Will the uncovering of the truth by Detective Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) matter to anyone other than the 8 to 12-year-old demographic who'll probably only need a few episodes of "Howdy Doody" to fill the void?
OK, so it's not exactly the mystery that haunted America, but what made this latest stroll down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams intriguing is that "Hollywoodland," alternating between Reeves life and Simos' investigation, was less a movie of two halves than two separate films entirely.
One is of a '50s L.A. as tangible as the present, with handheld camera strolls across bleached Van Nuys lawns and seedy characters in motel shadows. The other film, that of George Reeves' life, is as mannequin real as the nostalgia cafe in "Pulp Fiction." Was director Allen Coulter making a point about the power of reality versus the emptiness of stardom? The actors he chose seem to say yes. A strangely anonymous star lost as the human lead in "King Kong," Adrien Brody here proved his Best Actor Oscar for "The Pianist" wasn't a fluke. Balancing Simo's press-hustling cock of the walk with the sadness of a divorced father, Brody is a master, an aquiline James Dean who keeps his bottom-feeding P.I. narrative fascinating even when it should founder next to the object of its investigation.
On the other hand, while one gets the feeling the defeated, head-in-hands expressions in his agent’s office and while trying on the Superman outfit for the first time came very easily to Affleck, his scenes with a typically unsteady Diane Lane (as older lover Toni Mannix) play like a college production of "Private Lives." Lane gets the opportunity to yet again rehash her usual ‘insecure sex symbol’ ticks, though her Norma Desmond impression does pick up steam as the relationship starts to collapse. Those on the perimeter of the cast fare better; Robin Tunney as Reeves' climbing mistress finally gets the period role her gangster's moll features were meant for, while Bob Hoskins, as MGM Chief and possible Reeves murderer Eddie Mannix, practically walks into the audience with gravel-voiced menace.
Who killed George Reeves is beside the point. What Coulter really wants to show, in those sad crossfades between Affleck and Brody, is the ironies of the fate of talent in "Hollywoodland," both in its characters and the actors playing them. Brody represents the cult of the Method School, an undersought genius as angry at lost time as the mediocrity he investigates who, clearly better suited for other things, can't escape the spotlight.
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