Auto Focus: Movie Review, DVD Review (2002)
9/20/2007 Posted by Admin
Hardcore (Originally published 2002)
Directed by Paul Schrader, written by Michael Gerbosi, 107 minutes, rated R.
Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus" has all the elements of a sordid potboiler--and then some. In less than two hours, it packs in the poison of sudden fame, a sex-addicted television star, strip joints galore, orgies, prostitutes, homemade sex tapes, bitter divorces, bisexual undertones--and a gruesome murder in a seedy Arizona apartment complex.
It's enough to make you think that sweeps week has hit the video store.
The film focuses on the life and ugly death of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), the affable star of the 1965-71 hit sitcom, "Hogan's Heroes," who was bludgeoned to death in 1978 after a well-documented history of sleaze, self-delusion and an obsession with sex.
Since those in the know will know from the get-go that Crane's days are numbered even as the film begins, Schrader's challenge was to make a film that explored the reckless behavior that cost the actor so much--his two marriages, his television career, his friends and ultimately his own life--while shedding light on the psychology behind the compulsion that fueled his compulsive behavior.
Schrader succeeds in the former, but he fails in the latter. Indeed, while there are plenty of scenes in which Crane and his friend, John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), lure women to their homes or hotel rooms for orgies they'd tape on video, "Auto Focus" doesn't explain why Crane was so stupidly indiscrete in a town filled with so many wagging tongues.
Instead, the director, a self-described lapsed Calvinist who has made his share of films moralizing life's more salacious pitfalls--"Hard Core," "American Gigolo" and "The Comfort of Strangers" among them--is only ever interested in the sex.
He's drawn to it to the point of distraction, focusing more on the mechanics of the act than on the motivation behind the irrationally of Crane's nighttime excursions. As well acted as the film is by Kinnear, Dafoe, Rita Wilson as Crane's first wife and Ron Liebman as his longtime agent, "Auto Focus" unfortunately is only content to observe.
Grade: C
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Directed by Paul Schrader, written by Michael Gerbosi, 107 minutes, rated R.
Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus" has all the elements of a sordid potboiler--and then some. In less than two hours, it packs in the poison of sudden fame, a sex-addicted television star, strip joints galore, orgies, prostitutes, homemade sex tapes, bitter divorces, bisexual undertones--and a gruesome murder in a seedy Arizona apartment complex.
It's enough to make you think that sweeps week has hit the video store.
The film focuses on the life and ugly death of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), the affable star of the 1965-71 hit sitcom, "Hogan's Heroes," who was bludgeoned to death in 1978 after a well-documented history of sleaze, self-delusion and an obsession with sex.
Since those in the know will know from the get-go that Crane's days are numbered even as the film begins, Schrader's challenge was to make a film that explored the reckless behavior that cost the actor so much--his two marriages, his television career, his friends and ultimately his own life--while shedding light on the psychology behind the compulsion that fueled his compulsive behavior.
Schrader succeeds in the former, but he fails in the latter. Indeed, while there are plenty of scenes in which Crane and his friend, John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), lure women to their homes or hotel rooms for orgies they'd tape on video, "Auto Focus" doesn't explain why Crane was so stupidly indiscrete in a town filled with so many wagging tongues.
Instead, the director, a self-described lapsed Calvinist who has made his share of films moralizing life's more salacious pitfalls--"Hard Core," "American Gigolo" and "The Comfort of Strangers" among them--is only ever interested in the sex.
He's drawn to it to the point of distraction, focusing more on the mechanics of the act than on the motivation behind the irrationally of Crane's nighttime excursions. As well acted as the film is by Kinnear, Dafoe, Rita Wilson as Crane's first wife and Ron Liebman as his longtime agent, "Auto Focus" unfortunately is only content to observe.
Grade: C
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