Review: Hollywoodland (2006)

Hollywoodland
reviewed by Sam Osborn

Director: Allen Coulter
Screenplay: Paul Bernbaum
Cast: Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins
MPAA Classification: R (language, some violence and sexual content)

Hollywood notoriety is a theme for this fall's Academy hopefuls, with
Hollywoodland and The Black Dahlia separated by only one week on the
release slate. Each pulls its focus from a scintillating mystery that
yanked on the headlines of its time: the death of a semi-star ridden
with introspective misery. This first picture, Hollywoodland, saunters
along well enough, but dangles on plot threads too thin for a film of
such self-prescribed importance.

Its story is spun with what some would call a Rashomon style of
telling. I think more would call this the "CSI" method of
storytelling, but this is, after all, a film review and some sense of
film elitism must be elicited. Anyway, put simply, the death of George
Reeves (Ben Affleck) is shown multiple times with multiple changes and
adjustments made with each repetition of the scene. Investigating
Reeves' death is sleazy private investigator Mr. Simo (Adrien Brody),
whose been forced out of his former detective agency to work out of a
motel room for rich, neurotic husbands tracking their wives. He
stumbles upon the Reeves yarn through an old friend and goes to
Reeves' mother. She believes that her son's apparent suicide has
more grit in its teeth than the tale of an out-of-work actor low on
luck. She thinks George Reeves, the televised Superman of the fifties,
was put to death by a hand not his own. This piques Simo's interest,
seeing a chance for fame in solving a high-profile murder, and he goes
to work with zeal.

Hollywood has been depicted many a time in a period setting.
Blacklisting and McCarthyism, Polanski's tale of water distribution
in Chinatown, Robert Towne's recent tale of a struggling
screenwriter's love in Ask the Dust, and on the list goes; Los
Angeles was a beautiful place for struggle and power to converge in
conflict. Director Allen Coulter does well to emulate such depictions
of L.A., borrowing smartly from the American film canon. His Hollywood
is a world of diners filled with men in fedoras and crisp suits, and
swanky dinner parties with fat, sweaty producers and their drunken
mistresses. Coulter's work has until now been done in television
projects, namely episodes of "The Sopranos." His experience with
gangland cinema shines in the scenes in which the gold chains and
silver pens of Hollywood powers rain down like the chrome pistols and
neon sweat-suits of Tony Soprano's Jersey mob. His direction is
assured and interested in bold, tonal colors that swing his picture's
mood fast and hard.

But it's the story that can't keep up. Simo follows the breadcrumbs
to different characters and their motives, forming new conclusions
around each of their confessions as fast as the boys and girls in
"Law and Order." Reeves' own story is woven into this mystery,
depicting his tangled love affair with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane) and his
typecast career limited to the Superman character. Each tale is
intriguing, but only mildly so. Reeves' death is, in the end,
simplistic in motive and Simo's investigation thin. These elements
are made to be the driving force of Coulter's film, and are misplaced
as so.

Mr. Simo and Mr. Reeves are put into a brilliant parallel throughout
the picture, and their characters more dimensional than what the story
wields. Each character searches for something that maybe isn't there
and take tumbles and risky leaps trying to find it. By the end the two
are connected and supremely interwoven, but Hollywoodland has mistaken
this to be secondary to its requisite mystery. The fault doesn't make
for a flop, however, and Hollywoodland works well enough to slide
between the other woeful tales of Los Angeles. Just don't expect
Chinatown.
-rating: 3.0 out of 4



-Samuel Osborn