LANE, AFFLECK TURN IN SUPER PERFORMANCES.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

Perfect endings are hard to come by in movies, but the melancholy true-crime story ``Hollywoodland'' has a doozy. George Reeves, the actor who found fame playing Superman on television and then spent years trying to make people forget him in the role, has turned up dead in his Hollywood Hills home, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His agent comes across a home movie Reeves shot which finds the aging actor unconvincingly (and halfheartedly) performing some wrestling moves in an effort to convince a would-be employer that he could tour with a wrestling freak show.

And you watch Ben Affleck, playing Reeves, in this grainy, black-and-white footage, and you have in 30 seconds a profoundly eloquent summation of the pitfalls of fame and the ways actors debase themselves in order to sustain a career. As Reeves' pragmatic agent (Jeffrey DeMunn) puts it: ``An actor can't always act. Sometimes he has to work.''

Unfortunately, that perfect finish isn't where ``Hollywoodland'' actually ends, highlighting the biggest problem with a movie that shuffles back and forth between characters and genres but only succeeds when exploring the ways that Hollywood can eat you alive.

First-time director Allen Coulter frames ``Hollywoodland'' as a whodunit. Many people, including headline-hungry private investigator Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), believe Reeves didn't off himself. Someone else pulled the trigger. Was it his starlet fiancee (Robin Tunney)?

His spurned lover, Toni Mannix (Diane Lane)? Or did Mannix's husband, MGM studio executive Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins) order the hit, peeved that Reeves put his wife in an emotional tailspin?

Coulter (known for directing episodes of ``The Sopranos'' and ``Sex and the City'') and first-time screenwriter Paul Bernbaum try out each theory a la ``Rashomon,'' but as the movie choppily shifts between time frames, the mystery becomes less interesting than watching Reeves trying to reconcile his dreams to the realties of being a kept man and fading actor.

And he's not the only one struggling. ``I have another seven good years, then my ass drops like a duffel bag,'' Toni tells Reeves during their first night together. Eddie knows you can't beat time; you live by trying not to focus on the inevitability of aging. And Lane invests the ex-showgirl with a piercing vulnerability born of desperation, a woman as aware of her fate as she is each line in her face. It's a fantastic performance.

You wouldn't bet on Affleck to best Brody in an acting showdown, but he does here by virtue of the underwritten nature of Brody's low-rent hustler, a cliched character who wears out his welcome long before the movie imperfectly ends. Affleck, a limited actor who's OK within certain parameters, meanwhile succeeds in playing another less-than-gifted actor and gives the striving Reeves a poignancy that almost breaks your heart.

Glenn Whipp, [phone].

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

HOLLYWOODLAND - Three stars

(R: language, some violence, sexual content)

Starring: Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Adrien Brody.

Director: Allen Coulter.

Running time: 2 hr. 6 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: You may not care how TV Superman George Reeves died, but you can't help but be moved by his struggles against time and fame in this choppy genre-hopping movie.