Greg Kinnear: Bob Crane	Willem Dafoe: John Carpenter
Maria Bello: Sigrid Valdis	Rita Wilson: Anne Crane
Rob Leibman: Lenny	Shawn Reaves: Bob Crane, Jr. at 20
Director: Paul Schrader

Tell me more about it: "Auto Focus" opens with a collage of `60s pop iconography: a martini glass, "Playboy" pinups, a Holly-Go-Lightly cigarette holder, etc. The Schrader-Angelo Badalamenti song "Snap!" sets the satiric mood.

This deftly introduces the life of porno-addicted "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) ¾ whose hedonistic lifestyle eventually led to his grizzly murder-by-tripod. It inspires hope that Schrader might - finally - expose the psyche of a man torn by the needs of the soul and of the groin in a culture with no concern for souls.

Unfortunately, Schrader again fails to redeem himself ¾ or Crane. He never gets behind the 2-D pop icons he dangles in your face. At the beginning of the film, Crane seems a happily married, church-going father and grown-up class-clown, who dreams of moving from a local radio show to the big-time: Television. Amidst the garish pastels and `60s-era bric-a-brac, Schrader highlights a Virgin-and-Child hanging on the wall of Crane's home. It's color-coded to match the decor.

The same might be said of Kinnear's impersonation of Crane. Kinnear's own bid for stardom, going from a stint on the "E!" cable show "Talk Soup" to movies, somewhat mirrors Crane's. Schrader never provides dramatic space for Kinnear to get deeper into the desires he must share with Crane. Schrader just nails Kinnear's persona to the wall. It's like the "E!" version of "The New Testament."

Schrader makes a joke of the Catholic Crane's attempt to overcome the temptations thrown at him by the success of "Hogan's Heroes." Meeting with his priest to discuss his naughty - not yet adulterous - behavior, Crane confesses to playing drums at strip clubs to wind down after the day's television shoot. The priest invites Crane to jam with him instead. Schrader immediately cuts to Crane drumming at a strip club. This is smug dramatization, as quickly glossed over as Crane's failed marriages.

Schrader's simplification of spiritual struggle is the basis for the film's story. Crane forms a dependent relationship with an expert on new video and stereo technology, John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe). Carpenter offers Crane companionship, orgy hookups, and video equipment to document their conquests. Crane's celebrity gives Carpenter entrance into the fast life. Schrader executes a clichéd chromatic shift, darkening and decomposing the images, to dramatize Crane's plummet from star to has-been. Schrader's idea of retribution reveals that his priorities are as screwed up as his characters'.

Schrader, a former film critic who wrote famously on Robert Bresson's spiritual cinema, never really understood Bresson. Bresson knew that the spiritual life was also a sensual one. The sexual excesses, fantasies, and misogynist boob montage of Schrader's are anti-erotic. Schrader's style is closer to those epics by Cecil B. DeMille, who indulged audience fascination in Roman orgies and then brought down the F/X spectacle of Biblical punishment. "Auto Focus" is all punishment.

Rated R -- strong sexuality, nudity, language, some drug use and violence.

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