Not, As It Turns Out, Faster than a Speeding Bullet

Did the Superman actor shoot himself or was it murder? Can that question sustain a movie? Can Ben Affleck carry that movie? Read on

Mike D'Angelo

Functioning as a sort of aperitif for Brian De Palma's forthcoming adaptation of The Black Dahlia, a fictionalized take on the most notorious unsolved LA murder of the noir era, Hollywoodland, the first feature directed by Sopranos vet Allen Coulter, seeks inspiration in a decidedly less glamorous case: the somewhat suspicious death of little-remembered actor George Reeves. A genial lummox possessed of that peculiarly bland, rugged handsomeness found nowadays only in the autumn J. Crew catalog, Reeves made a minor splash as TV's original Superman; by 1959, however, his career was foundering, and on June 16 of that year he was found in his bedroom with a bullet in his head. The coroner's office ruled it a suicide, but speculation that he may have been offed ran rampant at the time and persists to this day, at least among the tiny and ever-dwindling subset of folks who read Hollywood Babylon. Is this material juicy enough to captivate those who'll come to it fresh? Not really, but Coulter gives it a creditable shot—starting with the title, a reference to the famous block-letter sign (it originally had LAND at the end) that's invariably employed as a symbol for dashed dreams.


Not content with one struggling dreamer, Coulter and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum offer us two. Most of Hollywoodland takes place in the weeks immediately following Reeves' death, as hustling private dick Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), hired by the actor's mother to find evidence of foul play, skulks around the city's scuzzily photogenic bungalows and apartment complexes, piecing together the details of Reeves' life by grilling everybody who ever knew the guy. Simo repeatedly corners Reeves' insolent wife (Robin Tunney), and also invades the home of his longtime sugar mama (Diane Lane) and her studio-exec husband (Bob Hoskins), demanding an answer to one crucial question: Just what did Reeves mean by "rosebud"? Wait, wrong movie. No dummy, Coulter doesn't directly ape Citizen Kane's interview-flashback structure; instead, the film just lurches randomly to and fro, albeit in a way meant to heighten our awareness of the parallels between Reeves' manful flailing and Simo's painfully awkward relationships with his girlfriend (Caroline Dhavernas), his ex-wife (Molly Parker), and especially his young son (Zach Mills), who's taking the Man of Steel's unexpected meltdown extremely hard.


By far the most interesting choice Coulter makes is casting Ben Affleck as Reeves. Early opinion seems evenly divided on whether Affleck gives a shrewd, self-deprecating performance intended to tweak his own image, or whether he merely proves that he lacks even the range to portray an actor of extremely limited range. In fact, both are true. On the handful of occasions when he's asked to convey Reeves' inner torment—the shame of being a kept man, the humilation of seeing himself hooted onto the cutting-room floor at an early preview from From Here to Eternity—Affleck, as usual, can't muster much more than generic brow furrows. But anybody who's seen Dazed and Confused or (especially) Shakespeare in Love must admit that Affleck can be a nimble comedian, and here he has a blast with the gladhanding aspects of Reeves' nature, whether shooting please-hire-me grins Billy Wilder's way at Ciro's or puffing up his pecs for a windowful of adoring pre-adolescent fans. It's only half of a great performance, but that's about twice as much as most of us would have expected.


Not much else in Hollywoodland flirts with greatness, alas. As in most movies based on real-life events—even accounts as speculative as this one—the tenor is one of diligent competence; in any given scene, you can't help but suspect that far more energy was spent on getting the period detail right than on crafting something original or arresting or thought-provoking. More to the point, the George Reeves saga, regardless of whether it ended in suicide or murder, simply doesn't resonate half a century later the way that Coulter and Bernbaum believe (or hope) it does. The facts are banal, the inventions lackluster. That leaves just the locations and the actors, plus a little pungent dialogue, which in combination are just sufficient to keep us engaged throughout. It's only when the credits finally roll that we find ourselves plagued by the same question that may have prompted Reeves to put a pistol to his head: "Is that it?"

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