Review – Hollywoodland

George Reeves’ slightly suspicious death could have made an intriguing picture. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. Instead we get a moody tale of a washed-up TV star intercut with the equally-uninteresting story of a private investigator hired by the star’s mother to investigate her son’s death. Adrien Brody is particularly poorly cast as the private eye; he delivers half his dialogue as if he can’t believe he’s actually saying such nonsense. Ben Affleck does a better job as Reeves, but that’s at least in part because it’s not all that big a stretch for him to play an actor who wishes he was better than he turned out to be. Overall what could have been a fun crime and conspiracy thriller instead turns out to be a sentimental dirge for a Hollywood that never was. See if desperate