MURDER, MYSTERY, MYTH

THE DEATH OF A SUPER MAN

History records that, circa 1998, Ben Affleck was arguably the coolest guy in America, certainly the coolest guy to have dated Gwyneth Paltrow. More current data shows that in the post-Bennifer, post -Gigli era he has become a knee-jerk Hollywood punch line, his generation's Joe Piscopo. Reasons for this transformation aren't altogether clear. Certainly other actors have made flops and dated flamboyantly; Affleck at least has a sense of humor about himself. And if life is fair he will now be on the comeback trail, thanks to his terrific performance in Hollywoodland, an L.A. noir about the untimely end of George Reeves, TV's first Superman, who was found at his Benedict Canyon home in 1959, nude, with a bullet hole in his head—officially a suicide, but whispers otherwise began almost immediately. Framing Reeves's story, Adrien Brody plays a fictional detective

looking into his death. The film really belongs to the wonderful Diane Lane, who tosses vanity to the wind in a series of Norma Desmond—ish scenes as Toni Mannix, Reeves's real-life mistress/keeper (she was married to the powerful MGM executive Eddie Mannix), and to Affleck, who performs here with a light touch and a melancholy step. His Reeves is a pleasant mediocrity cursed with both intelligence and nobility in a town that rewards neither. In a moving final scene, Affleck manages to convey Reeves's quiet despair as he realizes that Hollywood's barrel has no actual bottom, perhaps making use of his own career bruises in that weird alchemy that is movie-star acting. The film flirts with Chinatown-like intricacy, but in the end, at its best, it's a requiem for the washed-up, a less acid Sunset Boulevard.

BRUCE HANDY