The brave conduit of Schrader's doom-laden moralism is Greg Kinnear, giving one of those revelatory performances that makes everything an actor does prior seem like marking time.
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10/18/02
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Auto Focus (2002)
72
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:155
Fresh:112
Rotten:43
Average Rating:6.7/10
Consensus: Kinnear and Dafoe help make this downward spiral of one man's life a compelling watch.
Theatrical Release:Oct 18, 2002 Limited
Box Office: $1,818,622
Synopsis: AUTO FOCUS is the story of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), who was the star of the television series HOGAN'S HEROES in the 1960s. Before he achieved that particular fame, Crane was a popular radio talk... [More]
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello
Director: Paul Schrader
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Reviews for Auto Focus
Top CriticIn surely the best performance of his career, Kinnear expertly charts how the facade of someone who is little more than facade crumbles without him even knowing it.
10/18/02
Sordid, surreal tale of "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane's rise and fall grabs you tight like a clammy handshake and doesn't let go.
10/18/02
Kinnear and Dafoe's acting make this trip to the dark side worth it.
10/18/02
Kinnear plays Crane in one of the year's most pitch-perfect performances.
10/18/02
The performances are vividly alive.
10/18/02
Top CriticAuto Focus, Schrader's strongest movie since Affliction, is another meditation on American masculinity powerfully told with great wit and style.
10/18/02
Top Critic[Kinnear's] performance has to be one of the most sympathetic acts of decency one actor has ever extended to another.
10/18/02
Top CriticIt's good while they're dealing with things that they actually know, but when they enter the realm of making assumptions it slows way down.
10/18/02
I get about 30 e-mail messages every day trying to sell me services quite similar to what Crane did back in the early days of home video, which might be the reason why Focus fell disappointingly flat.
10/17/02
A biopic about Crane’s life in the classic tradition but evolves into what has become of us all in the era of video.
10/17/02
It serves up a warning against the power of the image and its ability to both enchant and ultimately enslave.
10/17/02
The strong performances do make it worth a look.
10/17/02
Strangely wonderful and weirdly touching.
10/17/02
Director Paul Schrader laudably keeps Auto Focus free of cheap sensation, but his one failing is that the film doesn’t disturb enough.
10/17/02
The film tries to make a case for Crane as the poster boy for fame's dark side, but it never quite succeeds.
10/17/02
[Kinnear's] marvelously ambiguous and deliciously blank here, lending a slightly sinister cast to every harmless, handsome man he's ever played.
10/17/02
A creepy, intermittently powerful study of a self-destructive man...about as unsettling to watch as an exploratory medical procedure or an autopsy.
10/17/02
Click to read the article
10/17/02
Morality takes a beating in 'Auto Focus,' a film more suitable for stag parties than for multiplexes.
10/17/02
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