I, Tonya **** / *****
Directed by: Craig Gillespie.
Written by: Steven Rogers.
Starring: Margot Robbie (Tonya
Harding), Sebastian Stan (Jeff Gillooly), Allison Janney (LaVona Golden),
Julianne Nicholson (Diane Rawlinson), Paul Walter Hauser (Shawn Eckhardt),
Mckenna Grace (Young Tonya Harding), Bobby Cannavale (Hard Copy Reporter),
Bojana Novakovic (Dody Teachman), Caitlin Carver (Nancy Kerrigan), Jason Davis
(Al Harding), Anthony Reynolds (Derrick Smith), Ricky Russert (Shane Stant).
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I, Tonya is probably the best
feature film version of this story that you could ask for – and it’s done in
the perfect style for it. The vast majority of the action takes place in the
early to mid-1990s, so director Craig Gillespie basically decides to make a
film directly from that era. You can see a lot of GoodFellas-era Scorsese
influence, a little Coen brother mixture of mockery and humanity, and a lot of
Gus Van Sant’s To Die For in the film as well. What happens in the film is so
insane you would never in a million years believe it, if it was not true. But –
of course – it is.
Margot Robbie plays Harding, and
it’s a performance that once and for all should prove to everyone just how good
she is (I was convinced after The Wolf of Wall Street – and in general, I don’t
think she’s been bad in anything, even if the movie sucked). Yes, she’s too old
to play Harding starting at 15, but you get over that pretty quick. This is a
brash performance – mixing humor with humanity, and more than a healthy dose of
self-delusion (Harding never thought she was responsible for anything, ever). The
film requires a lot of Robbie – and she carries it well. As her infamous
husband/manager Jeff Gilloly, Sebastian Stan is quite good as well – looking
awful with a horrible mustache, the film has him flash between sweetly dim, and
violent and abusive (the film is structured like a documentary, with various
people telling their stories, and then we see those scenes, so you get
different version of the people). The best performance in the movie belongs to
Allison Janney as Harding’s mother LaVona – you wouldn’t say that she humanizes
her – LaVona is clearly a monster, abusive, belittling and controlling, but you
get to see what makes her tick. The various guys involving in the actual crime
are all convincingly played as a gaggle of idiots – none more so than Paul
Walter Hauser as Gilloly’s best friend Shawn – the “body guard and
international terrorism expert”. He is hilarious in every scene he’s in.
I, Tonya does a great job at walking
that fine line between mockery and simply portraying its characters. It would
be easy to mock many of them – they are not smart, they are delusional, and
from 25 years in the future, the dress and style themselves horribly. The film
is certainly funny – it has to be given everything that happens – but it also
positions itself well in terms of explaining why this story caught the way it
did back then – and what that may mean about us today. The film never gets
overt about it – but we see what the story that knocked Harding out of the
headlines was, and we know what that means – and we see what she did in later
years. She was a reality TV star before reality TV.
The film is also, it must be
said, just extremely entertaining – an absolute blast from beginning to end. If
you’re going to make a film about this subject, you have to fully embrace its
inherent sleaziness – and this film does just that. It’s a film that keeps you
laughing while watching it – and only really sinks in later.
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