Director: Allen Coulter
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.5
Emotionally drained private eye Adrian Brody investigates the mysterious death of TV star George Reeves (played by Ben Affleck) - best known for playing Superman - and ends up in the middle of what he sees as a large cover-up involving the head of Warner Bros. (Bob Hoskins) and his wife (Diane Lane), with whom Reeves was having an affair. The ending, though daringly inconclusive, does turn the movie into a giant red herring - of sorts - and the whole 'let's expose Hollywood as being seedy' was done with more aplomb and originality in L.A. Confidential, and I'm always skeptical of movies funded by Hollywood with Hollywood stars about the "dark side" of Hollywood, as if that's a "thing of the past" and doesn't take place today. Brody is fine as usual, but this is genuinely one of the best roles I've seen Affleck in for a long time (since Boiler Room, if memory serves me correctly), though his comical jester Reeves doesn't convincingly transform into depressed Reeves - you can put makeup on him and tell him to look dejected, but in his heart he's still Affleck.
