Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) is a radio DJ in Hollywood looking for acting work. In 1965, he gets an offer for an unconventional project. It's a comedy in a Nazi POW camp. Hogan's Heroes becomes a big hit. He befriends home video salesman John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) in a strip club. Unlike his public wholesome image, his interests in strippers, sex, and home video are heightened by Carpenter and his state-of-the-art cameras. It's a toxic friendship of easy women, sexual proclivity, and hidden videos. In 1970, he divorces his wife Anne (Rita Wilson) and marries his co-star Sigrid Valdis, real name Patricia Olson (Maria Bello). Crane and Carpenter's friendship based on their sad common interest degenerates.Director Paul Schrader often dives into the darker side of humanity. It's a sad portrait well delivered by Kinnear. On the other hand, the movie is not always great at delivering the danger and tension. For half of the movie, Bob Crane is not threatened with discovery. This keeps the tension low. It's got a chipper tone which is weird. It would have been nice to speed up the first half. It takes too long to get to his downfall. Willem Dafoe is equally strong and necessary for this movie to work. There is interesting work here but this should be more intense.

Unless your as morally bankrupt as Bob Crane, this movie should leave you feeling so grotty you may find yourself wanting to scrub yourself clean. Perhaps this film is as much an expose' of producer/director Paul Schrader as it is of Mr Crane - the two faced TV star in denial of his real-life condition. Schrader, sometimes a fellow collaborator of Scorsese, who like Scorsese, is drawn to these stories of people wallowing in their own carnal excesses, seems to be enjoying it far too much. Some have written that they think Schrader is on a moral crusade but his work overflows with so much perverse detail it tends to paint him as little more than a fellow pornographer (as with Pasolini and Bertolucci). 'Auto Focus' also has too much fiction amongst its facts. Unfortunately, as with many based on 'fact' productions - speculation creeps in - especially where two people are in particular situations alone - film makers and writers use these opportunities to add their own suppositions as how the events may have actually played out.Here, Bob Crane, a relatively 'B' grade performer who becomes the star of the 1965 TV sit-com "Hogan's Heroes" - is painted as a regular church going family man - according to his son he was not. Crane ruined two marriages with his perverse sexual addictions. The script also follows an obvious bias by setting-up his fellow partner (involved in numerous pornographic photography sessions) John Carpenter, as the only suspect for Crane's murder - this also was not so. This 'set-up' is too obvious and somewhat weakly developed - it just doesn't work all that well. We end up knowing more about the vile exploits of Crane and Carpenter than we really need and not enough of what else was playing out at this time.Crane, for all his amiable outward persona, made many enemies - any could also have been involved with his murder. The DVD includes a documentary covering the two subsequent investigations and court cases that may (or may not) help to shed light on this brutal murder - a murder that to this day, remains unsolved. Maybe all you need to see (if interested in this sordid case) is the doco. Apart from good performances, sleazy (and maybe not for all the right reasons) is the overall feeling left following this show.

No need to go into consensus technical or performance aspects of the film, which I largely agree with. My reservations are with the way the movie's conceived.All in all, the movie does no favors to Crane, either the man or the performer. Instead, the star of Hogan's Heroes comes across as pretty much one-dimensional in his plunge into sex induced degradation. Surely there were other dimensions to the man that allowed the performer to carry on with a career up to the night of his murder. But except for a few sketchy scenes at the outset, this phase of his life is largely ignored. A few more glimpses of some kind of normalcy would have added badly needed realism and depth. Maybe a few scenes at home with the second wife would help frame the tragic descent. Yes, we get the idea of Carpenter's foul role in Crane's downspiral, but why repetitive scene after repetitive scene of the two and their various fleshly delights. Despite the semi-biographical intent and the use of the man's name, this is not a rounded character study. Instead, the film's mainly a voyeuristic look at turgidly told sex addiction. Now, I have no particular sympathy for Crane, the man, and never watched his dubiously conceived series. However, I sympathize with his offspring, now that the public's lasting impression will be drawn from this pitiless caricature.

Back when Rob Lowe and Tommy Lee were in grade school, Bob Crane was blazing a self-destructive trail with technical help from his friend, John Carpenter. I didn't grow up with the show "Hogan's Heroes" so seeing this film and reading Robert Graysmith's excellent book "Auto Focus: The Murder of Bob Crane" were eye opening experiences. A gadget man to the stars, John insinuated himself into the lives of Bob and others looking into late 60's audio-video equipment. The beginnings of home video are shown innocently through the kids playing in the Crane house. And then diabolically, with big daddy on the town (and all over America), as the obsessive duo travel on the strip joint and dinner theatre circuits, meeting hundreds of willing women who may or may not have been aware of the full extent of their sex partner's camera oriented games.Eventually, even Bob realizes he's gone too far and wants to change the bounds of his enabler's role in his life. And then it gets deathly dark! If you're aware of this film, you know how it ends. What's disturbing is how we get there. Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe are both awesome in their portrayals of Crane and Carpenter. Two shallow men reached the ends of their ropes and we are left with the sick conclusion that Crane's murderer was probably his "only friend".