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Trailer for "Hollywoodland"

On June 16, 1959, actor George Reeves, star of the hit television show The Adventures of Superman, was found shot to death in his Los Angeles home. The coroner’s verdict was suicide, probably caused by depression due to career setbacks in an industry that saw him only as the comic book superhero. But did he really kill himself, or was he murdered?

With a case like this, even if the evidence of suicide was watertight rumors of murder would still spring up: It’s just too juicy a story. Even more so when you add that Reeves had carried on a long-time affair with the wife of Eddie Mannix, MGM’s vice president in charge of security. A job like Mannix’s involved keeping bad news of the studio’s stars out of the papers. Mannix was rumored to have mob ties, and to have arranged the automobile death of his previous wife, but in Hollywood rumors tend to be more popular than the truth.

So as either history or biography, Hollywoodland doesn’t have much going for it. The script gets enough minor points wrong (Reeves’s role in From Here to Eternity was not cut out; the Superman show was shot in New York, not Los Angeles as the movie implies by omission) that it’s hard to give much credence to its theorizing on larger points. And in the end, it seems to imply anyway that Reeves most likely killed himself if for no other reason than that the Man of Steel was no match for LA angst.

As neo-noir, Hollywoodland plays pretty much by the numbers, with Adrian Brody’s scuzzy detective skirting perilously close to the edge of self-parody. Director Allen Coulter, whose work has primarily been for HBO series like The Sopranos and Sex in the City, gives every indication that he expected this one to debut on pay cable as well.

The one element that isn’t likely to be forgotten in two weeks when Brian DePalma’s adaptation of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia opens is Ben Affleck’s work as Reeves. It’s not entirely complimentary to say that it’s a perfect match of star and role; still, to the extent that Affleck crafted his performance rather than embodying it, it might be a signal for him that he has a brighter career in character parts than as a leading man.