Review: A star falls in Chris Rock's 'Misty Green' but the movie itself launches one

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Set us as preferred Chris Rock’s compelling tragicomedy “Misty Green” opens with a montage of Los Angeles that’s as intimate as an X-ray of a tumor.The city is sick, as evidenced in photos of barren studio lots, burning trees and the boarded-up Cinerama Dome.

But we’re also seeing L.A.through the lens of someone who respects it anyway.

The bleachy sunlight is just right, as is the shrugging acceptance that this town’s strivers must accept a fair amount of filth.Here, the boundary between the haves and have-nots is as flimsy as the sidewalk tents on the Walk of Fame — another heavy-handed image Rock includes — and has been ever since the first beautiful girls tumbled off the train looking to make it in moving pictures only to realize their looks wouldn’t take them much further.Misty Green (Rosalind Eleazar), the self-destructive fictional actor of the film, hasn’t been a naive starlet in over a decade.

Back in 2008, she won a supporting actress Emmy for an airport show called “Red Eye.” But cocaine, bad choices and her own bad attitude flew her career into the ground.Today, she’s stalled out and blaming her failure on happenstance.“I’m too Black to be with Leo, not Black enough to be with Damson, I’m not a nepo baby and I’m not a Brit,” she grumbles.

(Eleazar is, in fact, a Brit — wink wink.)Misty carries herself imperiously, faking success with a Birkin bag and beachfront crash pad that belongs to a dead lover whose widow wants it back.The disdain in her eyes wards off anyone from seeing weakness.

But we know her agent (Topher Grace) is right when he reminds her, “Don’t act like you never had a shot.” Movies In the title role of Chris Rock’s new film, the ‘Slow Horses’ star explores the pitfalls of Hollywood in an acting showcase that comes along rarely.Rock also acts in t...