Auto Focus: Movie Review

Auto Focus is a complex film, and like its subject, Bob Crane, sometimes an enigma. The movie stars Greg Kinnear (As Good As It Gets, Stuck On You) as Bob Crane, who, for those who don't know, was the star of the 1960s hit television series "Hogan's Heroes", a sitcom set in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II, which follows the misadventures of Crane's Col. Robert E. Hogan and his fellow POWs as they continually butt heads with German Col. Wilhelm Klink (Werner Klemperer). Crane started out in radio until he got his big break with "Heroes", which brought him the stardom that he would misuse to the point that it would bring about his ultimate downfall, and lead to his untimely and mysterious death (a still unsolved murder).

As the film opens up, Crane is a wacky radio disc jockey and churchgoing family man, who is on the verge of, but still hasn't had, his "Hogan's" break. And on the surface, he seems a pretty affable fellow, an upstanding average Joe, who's living the picture perfect American dream, but even then there are signs of what's festering underneath (comments he makes, his wife's discovery of his stash of porn hidden in the garage). It's almost as if Crane's whole persona is pretend both on and off camera; that he's been taught to, or rather forced to, suppress his instincts to the point that it has left him unsettlingly tame, like a tiger who spent its youth in the wild, then got captured and dumped in a zoo, and is now broken, but you can still see signs of that young, free tiger in its eyes. Another way to describe Pre-"Hogan's" Crane would be to compare him to someone with a history of alcoholism in his family who has never had a drink, but when he finally does, finds that like Will Ferrell said in Old School, "Once it hits your lips, it's so good!" However, Crane's vice wasn't spirits, but women-specifically, recording his trysts with women many times without the women's consent or knowledge.

Now, Crane wasn't alone in his obsession. No, he had an accomplice named John Carpenter (no, not that one), played by Willem Dafoe (Platoon, Spider-Man), a video expert he met on the set of "Heroes", who first introduced him to the depraved world that he would later come to call home. Carpenter was Crane's conduit to video technology, which was still an all but unknown commodity to the general public (and even those who did know of it did not have the money or celebrity that Crane used to acquire it). John was also the one who got the girls, using Crane's celebrity to lure the women into rendezvous with he and Crane. And this all went on for years right up until Crane's death. Crane's life crumbled under the weight of his obsession. Both his marriages failed. It strained his relationships with his children. Character issues stalled his career after "Heroes". And as aforementioned, it may or may not have led to his death.

Auto Focus is a good film. It loses steam as it goes along, however (kind of like Crane's life). Dafoe and Kinnear both give excellent performances. Which is not surprising for Dafoe, who specializes in creepy, but Kinnear goes toe to toe with him and never misses a beat. They're both interesting characters in what turns out to be a pretty nice little character study of a film. It's a sad story about a man getting all that he asked for and then some.