admin @ Fri, 2006-09-08 11:00
A character study of a low-rent private eye who gets in way over his head when he tackles a high-profile case, a role brilliantly brought to life by Oscar-winner Adrien Brody.
The plot is a "what-if" scenario based on a real event, the 1959 suicide of actor George Reeves, the star of the wildly popular "Adventures of Superman" TV show. Coulter and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum propose that maybe it wasn't a suicide: Perhaps he was killed as part of a Tinseltown grudge.
Brody plays Louis Simo, a low-rent P.I. who ekes out a living taking incriminating pictures of cheating spouses -- and he's not even very good at that. His excuse: He's distracted by his own disastrous marriage, which ended when his wife kicked him out for being irresponsible.
He discovers that the actor (played in flashback scenes by an understated Ben Affleck) had broken off an affair with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), the lonely trophy wife of MGM honcho Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins). He then accuses the Mannixes of being behind the murder -- she did it as jilted-lover payback or he did it out of anger over the affair.
Simo can't prove either theory, but he doesn't care. He intends to try the case in the most visible and volatile court in the land: the daily newspapers. He sets out to make a public stink, which immediately lands him in enough hot water to fill a Hollywood Hills swimming pool.
Brody, who won the best actor Oscar for "The Pianist," does a marvelous job of fleshing out Simo, who isn't so much a bad guy as he is a desperate guy. We don't endorse the liberties he takes in bending the facts to fit his theories, but we understand his motivation.
Director Coulter, who's making the jump to film after overseeing episodes of TV's "Sopranos" and "Sex and the City," spins a dandy tone around the story. Most of what Simo knows about being a private eye comes from movies and dime novels. He struts around acting cocky and spouting clipped dialogue built almost entirely of cliches. He buys into the act so completely he doesn't notice when others don't.
Bernbaum (also transitioning from TV, although with more modest credentials, unless you were impressed by "In the Doghouse') wrote a screenplay that would be a complete package if the mystery didn't unravel long before the narrative stumbles to a less-than-fulfilling resolution. About halfway through, the investigation gets pushed to the back burner while the movie concentrates on the characters. By the time it resurfaces, the only mystery still remaining is why the filmmakers brought it back.
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