The story of Bob Crane, radio personality, television star, sex addict.

Well. Mr. Otter and I had wanted to see this for a long time, and it was his birthday, so yet again we put off seeing A History of Violence and stayed home to watch this movie.

And. Well. It's basically an addiction story, although according to the writers Crane was addicted not to drugs or alcohol but to sex. And as we all know, there are two basic choices for addiction stories:

Person becomes addicted Things get worse Addiction ruins person's life Person beats the addiction Person gets life back (repeat if necessary)

Person becomes addicted Things get worse Addiction ruins person's life Things get even worse Person dies or gets sent to prison for a very long time (repeat for those who go to prison)

This was partially creepy and fascinating, as the (seemingly) gormless nice guy Crane is dragged further and further into a sordid underworld of sex, lies and videotape (and in the late 60s/early 70s, so the recording equipment details are fascinating and yet so old fashioned) and his life is ruined...then he dies. (No, that's not a spoiler, anyone who knows anyting about Crane knows about his mysterious death).

Mr. Otter and I were huge Hogan's Heroes fans, I remember watching it as a young Otter and how extemely handsome Bob Crane was...I even remembered the names of most of the actors in the show, amazing for me, I never remember actors' names (thank you IMDB, without whom this site would not be possible!)...so it obviously made an impression on me.

Greg Kinnear plays Crane...and on the one hand, he's perfect: handsome, yet clueless and malleable, an otherwise nice guy who just doesn't understand why his life is coming apart...and yet...this is the fourth or fifth movie I've seen Kinnear in...and he's pretty much the same in all of them...blandly nice, genially wierd, good looking...but not much fire or personality of his own. Willem Dafoe is perfect as Crane's Svengali, forming a symbiotic relationship in which Dafoe supplies the electronics and Kinnear the girls and aura of fame.

But there's still no there there, no catharsis, no either overcoming of the addiction and poisonous relationship or final crushing defeat by it...one got the feeling that this situation would just have gone on forever until Crane and Carpenter were 70 and still porking elderly broads on videotape (or dvd, at that point...). The fact that Crane was killed as his career and life were hitting what looked like the end of the spiral is part of the reason for the feeling of filmus interruptus...and also that his murder was unsolved, therefore giving the viewer no AHA, no ending, no feeling of closure...not unlike watching one of their homemade sex tapes, it just recycles a story we've seen before without a satisfying conclusion.

Interesting, but not outstanding.