Movie Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker *** ½ / *****

Directed by: J.J. Abrams.

Written by: Chris Terrio & J.J. Abrams and Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow based on characters created by George Lucas.

Starring: Daisy Ridley (Rey), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), John Boyega (Finn), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Naomi Ackie (Jannah), Keri Russell (Zorii Bliss), Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa), Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Lupita Nyong'o (Maz Kanata), Billie Lourd (Lieutenant Connix), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Richard E. Grant (Allegiant General Pryde), Greg Grunberg (Snap Wexley).

 

The Rise of Skywalker is the final chapter in what is the oddest of the three Star Wars trilogies to date. Odd because in this era of the MCU, where Marvel plans everything multiple movies ahead, it almost feels like with this series, there was no plan film-to-film. The Force Awakens was a pure nostalgia delivery system – basically a remake of A New Hope, with different characters stepping into the roles, and different family backstories and mysteries, etc. – but a movie designed to give fans of the original trilogy precisely what they wanted, after the disappointing prequel trilogy. When Rian Johnson took over for The Last Jedi – the best Star Wars movies since The Empire Strikes Back (no, I don’t want to hear why it sucked from you – I’ve heard it, you’re wrong, and I don’t care), he tried to drag the series, kicking and screaming, into a new era – an era in which you leave the past behind, and move into the future. He seemed to discard many of the mysteries JJ Abrams set up in The Force Awakens – and more than that, tried to tell you that they didn’t matter. It was a risky gambit – a bet that after giving fans precisely what they wanted with The Force Awakens, now he would give the series precisely what it needed – a way forward into a new world. And then JJ Abrams took it back over for The Rise of Skywalker, and essentially decided to undo it all.

 

Personally, I liked where Johnson was going with this series – away from all the family legacy stuff, where you were defined by who your parents were. He seemed to set Rey (Daisy Ridley) up to be a new kind of hero – something he continued right to the last shot of the movie, with some random kids using the force. Johnson clearly decided not to make your parents Star Wars. Abrams on the other hand, seems to want to do just that. In retrospect, perhaps the smarter play would have been to just let Abrams do all three films. At the very least, it would have meant he wouldn’t have had to spend so much time in the first half of Rise of Skywalker seemingly trying to undo what Johnson did. And perhaps with a different second chapter, the big reveal of Rey’s true lineage in this film wouldn’t have felt like such a betrayal to who she is (or, who we thought she was) and it would have made more sense – not to mention the why Last Jedi’s most divisive character, Rose, is just insultingly tossed aside in this film. We still would have gotten the biggest groaner of this film (“He must have been on a different transport”) – but maybe it wouldn’t stick out quite so much if it was the only clunker in the film.

 

On the whole though, I have to say I enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker. It isn’t The Last Jedi style ambitious, not quite the nostalgia delivery system of The Force Awakens – but much of it is fun. There are battles galore in the film – that is basically a long chase sequence after a MacGuffin, before the film tosses that aside when it’s no longer needed, but by then, the endgame has been set up. And, as in the past, it plays out on two fronts – Rey and Kylo Ren with light sabers (and whatever else I didn’t like about the way they concluded this story, I did like who their story ended) and big space battle playing out as well. You add in more top notch special effects, John Williams music and moments specifically designed to make you mist up, that still work anyway, and you have an entertaining Star Wars movie. In terms of acting, I’ll single out Daisy Ridley, who does all she can with the material, and is usually very good, and especially Adam Driver – who shows just why he may be the best working actor right now, as no matter what they throw at Kylo Ren, he more than sells it.

 

The problem with Star Wars at this point is more one of expectation than reality. We really should get used to the idea that a new Star Wars movie isn’t necessarily a massive event as it once was, and we need to hang every expectation on every one. Before 2015, there had been six Star Wars movies – and they’ve now made five more in that time – one every year. It’s just another cinematic universe at this point. If they’re going to continue, fans are going to have to become more flexible – allowing more than one vision in this universe. Otherwise, what precisely is the point of continuing to make these film – other than as a branding and merchandising opportunity for Disney.

Movie Review: Aquarela

Aquarela ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Victor Kosakovskiy.

Written by: Victor Kosakovskiy and Aimara Reques.

 

Aquarela is a movie that I have to admit that I probably would have liked a lot more had I seen it on the big screen. The film is a documentary about the sheer power of water on earth in all of its forms. There is virtually no dialogue, no voiceover, and very few humans ever on screen. It is an amazing looking film that simply watches giant waves, glaciers, ice and its sheer power. It is meant to be a contemplative film – a film that forces you to consider the importance of water for the earth and its ecosystem. Watching the film on a massive screen, with great sound it probably would have had that impact on me. Watching it on a smaller screen, with more distractions readily available, it is hard to have that same impact.

 

On a technical level, it really is impossible to find a critique of Aquarela. The film looks amazing – quite simply it gives you a view of water and ice that you have never seen before. Because much of the film doesn’t have music, it also lets you simply hear the moving ice and water. The film occasionally has humans on screen as well – not because they are telling a story with them, but more for scale. The closest thing you get to a human story is in the opening 20 minutes – which is about people who are hauling up cars that have been trapped under the ice – and certainly does show the tragic power of it all. Occasionally, the film does use music – rock music normally – over the massive waves that you see from a point of view you’ve never seen before.

 

A film like Aquarela depends on immersion to really work – you need to be enveloped in it, unable to look away, unable to concentrate on anything else. In the theater, I really do think Aquarela would have been something to see. Unfortunately, I missed it there. And so, watching it all at home, you can intellectually know what is being done, you can admire the sheer technical brilliance of what you are seeing. And yet, it doesn’t envelope you the way it should, doesn’t immerse you.

 

In short, I think the chance to fully experience Aquarela is already gone now that its out of theaters, and on home video. It’s a film I admire, but didn’t actually enjoy that much.

Where's My Roy Cohn?

Where’s My Roy Cohn? *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Matt Tyrnauer.

 

Roy Cohn was a malignant force in America for decades. He made a name a for himself while he was still in his early 20s – as the prosecutor of the Rosenbergs for being spies, and used that to become Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man in his communist witch hunt. When that ended, he moved back to New York and entered private practice, where he was the fiercest, most corrupt lawyer around. He would do anything to win, was indicted multiple times, and was finally disbarred late in his life. He would represent any and every one. He plays the press to get the stories he wanted out there. Although a registered Democrat, he worked with the Republican party, helping to get all sorts of people elected. He counts among his protégés Donald Trump and Roger Stone (only the later sits for this doc). He was Jewish and gay, and hated both of those aspects about himself. He would die of AIDS in the later 1980s, insisting the whole time that it wasn’t AIDS, and he wasn’t gay.

 

Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn (a Trump quote – as he wants someone like his old mentor fighting in his corner) is certainly not the flashiest of docs. It’s fairly dry – a lot of talking heads, and old archival footage, and has no new information about him in it – so if you already know, and revile him, you won’t learn anything new. And if you wanted to get to know the person he really was, you’d probably be better off watching Angels in America – Tony Kushner’s masterpiece of a play (that became an excellent HBO miniseries – Al Pacino plays Cohn in that one) in which Cohn is a main character. The Roy Cohn in that can say things that the real Cohn never would in public.

 

And yet, I think the documentary does a good job of giving a brief overview of Cohn – and just what made him such wretched force in American life – one whose impact is still felt today. Obviously Tyrnauer knows this – even before he introduces Trump in the documentary, he plays up the ways that Trump’s playbook mirrors what Cohn did – use the press, because they’ll quote you in the headline, and no one reads beyond that, claim victory even when you’ve lost and on and on and on. You can see just what Trump learned from him.

 

There is a difference though – Cohn was incredibly smart and well-spoken. He hated many aspects of himself, and had some issues with his mother he never resolved, but he was in many ways an evil genius. When you watch the film, and the things he did just keep piling up, you almost have to admire him – for just how horrible and underhanded he was. This isn’t even really a controversial opinion – many of Cohn’s cousins are in the film – and they loved him, even if they disagreed with them, but know exactly who he was. Even Roger Stone seems not to counter the premise that Cohn was an evil genius – he admires him all the more for it.

 

Cohn is probably alone in the fact that he helped shape American life from the 1950s right up until today – from McCarthy to Trump, and much in between, Cohn’s legacy has been felt even though he’s been dead for decades. This film gives you an insight into why – it has a lot of great footage of Cohn himself, spinning right until the end. The film does, to a certain extent humanize Cohn – in particular when they talk about his closeted homosexuality (almost everyone was in the closet in Cohn’s generation) – including the McCarthy Army hearings – which essentially ended McCarthy’s career, and Cohn’s as his right hand man. The people who attacked back were right – of course – but also said such horrifically homophobic things about Cohn (coded, of course, as they would have been) that you understand why Cohn stayed in that closet. That doesn’t excuse his behavior of course – but it does make Cohn into a human being, rather than a monster. And there is value in that.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Doulos (1962)

Le Doulos (1962) 

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville based on the novel by Pierre Lesou.

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo (Silien), Serge Reggiani (Maurice Faugel), Jean Desailly (Le commissaire Clain), René Lefèvre (Gilbert Varnove), Marcel Cuvelier (Un inspecteur), Philippe March (Jean), Fabienne Dali (Fabienne), Monique Hennessy (Thérèse), Carl Studer (Kern), Christian Lude (Le docteur), Jacques De Leon (Armand), Paulette Breil (Anita), Philippe Nahon (Remy), Daniel Crohem (L'nspecteur Salignari), Michel Piccoli (Nuttheccio).

 

Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos is one of those crime thrillers so full of double crosses and misdirection’s that even if you had the whole thing mapped out, I’m still not sure it would make all that much sense. That is part of the point in this film about “no honor among thieves” as the film takes great pleasure in deliberately misdirecting the audience in its story where it’s impossible to know who to trust and how to root for – and you just sign up to go along for the ride. It may not be as deep about morality as some of Melville’s later gangster pictures would become – but it’s perhaps even more entertaining.

 

We are informed from the start the a Doulos is a type of hat worn by police informants – and the film deliberately tries to keep you guess as to which of its characters is really the so-called finger man in question. Melville delights in shooting men with similar builds, wearing similar clothes and hats from behind, all to make things even murkier. When the film opens, we are following Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) who has just been released from serving our years in prison. The long, brilliant opening scene sees Maurice go see an “old friend” about getting a “job”, some money and perhaps a gun. But in what will become part of the storytelling of Le Doulos, the scene ends with Maurice doing something that at first seems explainable – but later, in a dialogue heavy scene, will make sense in retrospect. Melville does this repeatedly throughout the film – providing the reasons for things after the action.

 

At times in the film, the focus will shift to Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) – an old friend, and crime partner of Maurice’s, who is perhaps looking to get out of the game before he ends up in jail or dead. The film, of course, wants us to believe that Silien is the finger man – and truly, we see a lot that directly points at him. But is the film playing straight with us – or is it doing more of that misdirection? Or is Melville three moves ahead, and knows that by making Silien look guilty, we’ll assume he’s innocent, when really he’s guilty?

 

The movie will introduce a lot more characters – on both sides of the law – and none of them seem all that trustworthy. Motives are often murky – and there are long dialogue scenes between various characters where they both tell the truth and lie at the same time – so untangling fact and fiction becomes impossible. Melville delights in these long dialogue scenes – and keeping us on edge.

 

Of course, Melville was a master storyteller, and a master stylist – and he’s in top form through Le Doulos. The film moves quickly and smoothly – moving from one great sequence to the next, but always taking its time getting there. Quentin Tarantino has said the film was an influence on Reservoir Dogs – and you can see that in its story where criminals don’t know who to trust, and everyone is a rat. But you can see a greater influence perhaps in the way Melville takes his time in those dialogue scenes – that can on minute after minute, when most movies would simply want to get what is narratively needed out of a scene and move on. You learn a lot about these characters, even when they are lying to everyone. You can also see the films influence on things the Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s movie, or perhaps The Usual Suspects, with Belmondo’s long monologue at the end of the film, which untangles the web that has been weaved throughout the rest of the film (or perhaps just tangles it in a different way).

 

And it’s also just a delight to see these actors work. Belmondo is in his more classic mode here as the slick taking conman than he was in Leon Morin, Priest. Michel Piccoli is a delight in a smaller role as a gangster who has a great final scene. Everyone else is working at the top of their game as well. I suppose one could call the film misogynistic if they wanted to – the film certainly doesn’t treat its female characters very well – but then again, everyone in the movie is horrible in one way or another. It’s the type of film you simply strap in for an enjoy the ride – enjoy being conned and lied to, and trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not. I bet that’s true even the second, third – or tenth – time you watch this film.

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Leon Morin, Priest (1961)

Léon Morin, Priest (1961)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville based on the novel by Béatrice Beck.

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo (Léon Morin), Emmanuelle Riva (Barny), Irène Tunc (Christine Sangredin), Nicole Mirel (Sabine Levy), Gisèle Grimm (Lucienne), Marco Behar (Edelman), Monique Bertho (Marion), Marc Eyraud (Anton), Monique Hennessy (Arlette), Edith Loria (Danielle Holdenberg).

 

Leon Morin, Priest is an odd film for the three principals who made it. For director Jean-Pierre Melville, it is a film set during the German occupation of France – which he explored in his first film, Le Silence de la Mar (1949) and would later explore in his masterpiece Army of Shadows (1969) – but it’s only partly about that. For Jean-Paul Belmondo, who plays the title character, it is one of the films he followed up Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless with – that film made him a star and a sex symbol. The real main character though is Barny, played by Emmanuelle Riva, also on the heels of a film that made her a star – Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Yet, when you hear that Melville is making a film about the time of German occupation, you envision a thriller of some sort a film about the resistance. And yet, Leon Morin, Priest is really more of a religious conversation – taking place mainly in a room, where these two characters talk about religion. There is an undercurrent of sexual attraction between the two of them, unspoken mostly, but it’s certainly something both characters realize. He enjoys these sexual and theological games the two of them play – she’s not the only young woman who visits him in his room, although their relationship is different. The only thing that really makes him upset is that if you explicitly reference the sexual tension in the room.

 

The two of them meet when she storms into confessional one day, not to confess her sins, but to tell the priest that religion is the opiate of the masses. She is a communist and an atheist, a widow with a half Jewish daughter on the father’s side, who has relocated to this small town in the French Alps when the correspondence school she works at relocated there from Paris, when the occupation started. At first, it’s the Italians who are the occupying force, with silly hats with feathers in them. Things get more serious when the Germans arrive, and the Jews start being rounded up. With a couple of other women, she conspires to have their children baptized to try and protect them – and eventually, she will send her daughter away to live with a couple of old women on a farm, to get her out of the way. Perhaps she simply storms into that confessional to confront the priest because she’s bored and frustrated – spoiling for a fight, but unsure of who she can argue with.

 

For his part, Morin the priest doesn’t rise to the bait. He acknowledges that religion is used by some as an opiate, and responds equally mildly to her other accusations about the church’s obsession with material wealth –all the things churches have in them, and how they respond to wealthy people, while still defending the church – and more importantly, faith – itself. He’ll give her books to read, and then they come back together to discuss them – and everything else. The pair of them are clearly attracted to each other – they flirt in a strange way. We are privy to her thoughts – but not his. She obsessed over some slight movements on his part – the way he “accidentally” allows his cassock to brush against her during mass one day for instance.

 

With him, she allows herself to say what she could not to others. She is clearly a sexual being – with an attraction to another woman in the office, and perhaps women in general. He isn’t shocked by this. We see him with a few of the other young women who come into his office – one who is determined to sleep with him. He shuts that down very quickly, almost rudely. As long as these conversations remain the abstract – he seems to enjoy the underlining sexual tension in them. We don’t see him talk to any men for example – although to be fair, we don’t see many men anyway (when we do, at the tail end of the baptism sequence, they leave the church to go back to the woods, back to the resistance).

 

Leon Morin, Priest is a film about a lot of things. Yes, it’s about religion. The religious conversations that Leon and Barny are real. She comes to him with her doubts, and he doesn’t dismiss them – but he does have an argument for all of them, that is rooted in Catholicism. It is about politics and the occupation as well. It’s interesting that she clearly hates the Nazis, and yet doesn’t join the resistance herself, or even distance herself from her friend, who looks far more kindly on the Nazis, and far less charitably on the Jews. The politics and religion are linked – because as an atheist, she thinks separating people on the basis of religion is silly. Her daughter, who could be carted away, isn’t even really a Jew – and baptizing her didn’t really make her Catholic either. And it is about sex. Perhaps she keeps going to him for no other reason than that there are no eligible men around – they’re fighting, somewhere, or in the forest – and if she is a lesbian, or at least bi-sexual, that’s not the type of thing you can be open about. And Morin clearly relishes his role – he likes to get the women turned on, in a way, and then leave them wanting – he enjoys teasing them, then admonishing them if they read the “wrong” thing into it

 

Through it all, Leon Morin remains kind of an enigma. You get the sense that he is enjoying the sexual tension with these various women – but he very clearly has a line that he draws as well. He is a good priest – a progressive priest for his time who likes to live in the world of ideas. By the end, when he’s being transferred out to the countryside, he kind of adopts the posture of a willful martyr – he knows no one where he’s going will care about his books, that before he can talk about the things that really matter, he’ll also have to talk about livestock – but he will convert the world, one village at a time. But who is he really? What will he become? It is fitting that the film is called Leon Morin, Priest even if Barny is clearly the central character in the film. She is a complex character – rather daringly so for 1961 – and yet, he’s the one everyone is obsessed with.

 

It’s an odd film for Melville. It’s film with no real action in it, and done in a slightly different style than most of his work. It’s a calmer film – a stiller film (if that’s a term) in that it’s more a collection of moments and scenes, rather than a fluid story, which he so excels at. It is, of course, a film about moral complexity – that doesn’t see anyone either as good or bad, anything as right or wrong – but rather everyone as a mess of contradictions. It was Melville’s attempt at mainstream success – and it worked, perhaps largely because he was able to get Belmondo and Riva in the leads, and knows that at many in the audience are there to see how hot Belmondo is, even dressed as a priest. It’s perhaps a little too long (the version I saw, on the Criterion Channel runs 128 minutes, not the 117 minutes it lists on IMBD) – and eventually, you do tire a little or Morin’s games – Barny deserves more than this. But for this time, and place – Morin is the best she can do. There is a quality in her voiceover narration of someone looking back at her past – and perhaps being a little angry with herself for falling for it, while also maintaining a certain nostalgic longing for Morin. Their relationship is still complex, even viewed in the rearview mirror.

Movie Review: The Two Popes

The Two Popes *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Fernando Meirelles.

Written by: Anthony McCarten.

Starring: Jonathan Pryce (Pope Francis), Anthony Hopkins (Pope Benedict), Juan Minujín (Pope Francis Young), Sidney Cole (Cardinal Turkson), Federico Torre (Medina Estevez), Pablo Trimarchi (Militar), Juan Miguel Arias (Paolo Gabriele), Lisandro Fiks (Father Jalics), María Ucedo (Esther Ballestrine).

 

I am not Catholic, but my wife is, and I remember how upset she got when she found out that Pope Benedict was resigning from being Pope. She didn’t particularly like Benedict – she is a progressive Catholic is most ways, but believes, much like the character of Pope Francis does in The Two Popes, that Popes cannot and should not resign. Having two Popes – even if one isn’t technically Pope anymore – was something that made her very upset.

 

The Two Popes is about that very idea. It takes place the year before Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) resigns when he invites the future Pope Francis (Jonathan Pryce) to the Vatican. Francis thinks it is because he has asked to retire – but it’s not that. Benedict knows that the future Francis got a number of votes when Benedict was elected – and could well become Pope when he resigns. The two disagree on pretty much everything – but Benedict, in his wisdom, thinks that perhaps it is he who is wrong – or at least, out of touch. He wants to get to know the man who may take over for him.

 

What follows is basically a two hander for two terrific veteran actors at the top of their game. You can complain – and perhaps justly – that they cast two Welsh actors to play an Argentinan and a German, but you cannot argue with their performances. Hopkins has often been on cruise control over the past 20 years or so, but there’s little denying that when he wants to be, and is given the chance, he can still deliver a great performance. His Pope Benedict is a stubborn man in many ways – and out of touch. He knows nothing except for the Church and its teachings. He has been so inside its politics for so long that he has lost touch with everything else – which has led to some of the worst things the Catholic Church has ever done in its long, not so great history. He is also a very smart man – someone well taught, and well-spoken. He always wanted to be Pope, but now that he is, he is more isolated than ever. He can see that the Church needs to change, but also that he will never be able to make those changes himself.

 

Pryce is given the more plum role of the future Pope Francis – a man of principle, a man of the people who has spent so much time with the poor, that he is better able to see precisely what it is that they need. He is horrified by the child molestation scandal, how the church treats the poor from their own opulent houses of worship, and how the church refuses to modernize. He is also ashamed of his own past – which he will eventually tell Pope Benedict is a moving sequence – the mistakes of a young priest, that still haunt him decades later. You will undeniably favor Pope Francis – as the movie does – but come to respect both men.

 

The film gives these two greats actors a chance to play off each other. It was based on a play by Anthony McCarten – who also wrote the screenplay, but I don’t think the play was ever produced. It feels like a stage piece in many ways – the director, Fernando Meirelles, doesn’t do much except let the pair of actors go, and dive into their lines with all they have. It is enough to make the film very entertaining – even all if it is all talk, for more than two hours.

 

And yet, for me, the film pulls its punches a little too much. We all know the role Pope Benedict plays in covering up the clergy molestation scandal that has rocked – and continues to rock – the church. The film briefly mentions it near the beginning of their first meeting, but Pope Benedict shuts it down just as quickly. Late in the film, Benedict will ask the future Pope Francis to hear his confession – and we hear enough to know what it will be about, but then the sound cuts out, and we do not hear the rest. Leaving this mostly unsaid – simply alluded to – allows you to still like and respect both men – and yet also, it feels like perhaps the most important thing is left unsaid in the film. The film feels incomplete unless they are going to address the elephant in the room – and it feels like the film does just enough so that you cannot complain they didn’t address it at all, and then immediately cuts it off.

 

That’s a shame really – because it really does feel like Pryce and Hopkins are going on all cylinders here, digging into their juicy roles, and giving it there all. Hopkins is of course one of the most celebrated actors of his generation - an Oscar winner, and multiple nominee, beloved by many. Pryce has always felt to too overlooked – you look back at his career, and it’s full of great work, and yet he has never even been nominated for an Oscar, let alone won one. He’s always great – and he is certainly equal to the task of going toe-to-toe with Hopkins.

 

If the movie were as good as the two actor in it, then this would one of the great films of the year. It isn’t – and it’s because it pulls back, when it needs to push forward. It’s too bad – the church needs this type of dialogue, and needs it at the highest levels, and out in the open. Even if it’s in a work of fiction like this.

Movie Review: Richard Jewell

Richard Jewell **** / *****

Directed by: Clint Eastwood.

Written by: Billy Ray based on the magazine article by Marie Brenner.

Starring: Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell), Sam Rockwell (Watson Bryant), Olivia Wilde (Kathy Scruggs), Jon Hamm (Tom Shaw), Kathy Bates (Bobi Jewell), Nina Arianda (Nadya), Ian Gomez (Agent Dan Bennet), Niko Nicotera (Dave Dutchess), Mike Pniewski (Brandon Hamm), Dylan Kussman (Bruce Hughes), David Shae (Ron Martz), Charles Green (Dr. W. Ray Cleere), Billy Slaughter (Tim Barker), Alex Collins (Max Green), Dani Deetté (APD Officer Kacie Boebel), Matthew Atchley (FBI Agent Doug Wall), Olaolu Winfunke (Eli Gradestone).

 

It is a shame that almost all the talk around Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell film has centered around one character – Kathy Scruggs – and not just that one character, but one scene involving that character. Scruggs was a real reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution – the newspaper that rushed to publish that Jewell was the suspect in the Centennial Park Bombing during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, which kicked off a process that nearly destroyed his life, despite the fact that he was completely innocent. The FBI and the Media had Jewell in their crosshairs, and wouldn’t let him out – a tragedy considering that Jewell’s action saved lives that night, and whatever else you can say about him, that wasn’t right. The scene in question involves how Scruggs got Jewell’s name in the first place – in the film, it is outright stated that she sleeps with the FBI Agent in Charge, Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) – a fictional amalgamation of a character – to get the information. In reality, we don’t know what Scruggs sources were, or how she got the information – like any good reporter, she wouldn’t reveal them, but there is absolutely no evidence, and before the movie no speculation, then Scruggs slept with anyone to get the information. The fact that Eastwood’ film depicts it as such is a slap in the face to Scruggs – who died years ago – and is a continuation of a harmful, and inaccurate, stereotype about female reporters sleeping with sources to get information. It shouldn’t have happened. And not only that, it was wholly, completely unnecessary. There is more than enough real, factual information about the sins of the FBI and the Media involved to paint them as the bad actors they were in this case, without adding this unnecessary smear. Olivia Wilde’s wild eyed performance as Scruggs throughout the film doesn’t help much either. It’s a black mark on the film – and on what had been a great year for Wilde, with her terrific performance in A Vigilante and her directorial debut Booksmart.

 

It's a shame because of all of that, but it’s also a shame because so much of the rest of Richard Jewell is a stellar movie – one of Eastwood’s best late period films. You can question the politics of it all – why Eastwood has decided to tell this story, where the media and the FBI are the bad guys, in an era where Donald Trump seems to believe that to be true, but Jewell’s case is a real one – and is about the dangers of jumping to conclusions when there are no facts. Of course Richard Jewell, the man who found the bomb needed to be investigated. But they didn’t need to drag him through the mud while doing so. And they did it because he was fat, seemed kind of slow, and lived with his mother. Because he had had a failed law enforcement career, and delusions of grandeur about his power and what he could do. The film is about Jewell’s slow dawning realization that no matter how much he loves these institutions; they will never love him back.

 

Jewell is played by Paul Walter Hauser, the standout supporting actor from I, Tonya a few years ago (who was also quite good in BlackKklansman last year). It is perfect casting, and Hauser makes the most of his first lead role in a film. He plays Jewell as a man who really does believe in law and order – believes in the police, in law enforcement, and enforcing the law as written. When he was a college rent-a-cop, he went too far in enforcing the rules, and got fired. It wasn’t the first time he got let go from a police job because he was overly enthusiastic. He is, in short, the kind of guy you don’t want to be a police officer. This is how he ends up working security during the Olympics – which is where he finds the bomb. The opening sequence, with the sequence of events leading up to the explosion is masterfully directed by Eastwood – slowly building the tension to what we know, but the people in the crowd do not know, is coming. All the acts of domestic terrorism (mass shootings included) in the decades since then has just made the sequence all the more terrifying.

 

From the time Jewell becomes a suspect, he doesn’t seem to fully understand what is happening to him. Luckily, he hires a lawyer, Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell, excellent in ways that aren’t immediately obvious) who protects him as much as he can. The problem is that Jewell is a believer in these institutions and wants to help them. But while Jewell has an inflated sense of his own importance – and seems somewhat delusional – he isn’t stupid. He is angry, but he doesn’t want to show it. His mother Bobbi (Kathy Bates) doesn’t understand what is happening – and her life is being ruined as well, despite how supportive she is. Meanwhile, the FBI and the Media keeps acting as if Jewell is guilty, and they have him dead to rights – despite some very obvious facts that don’t add up, and no evidence of any kind.

 

Basically, everything that doesn’t involved Kathy Scruggs is top notch Clint Eastwood. His ideas of heroism, of good and evil, have always been more complex than he is given credit for. The film doesn’t quite hit the heights of his best late period film – American Sniper (a prime example of a film that is more complex than many people, on both sides, think it is). It is another complex, moral look at heroism in America – the limits of our institutions, and the danger of believing in them too much. When Donald Trump says Fake News, he is undermining everything that it means to be American – but sometimes, there is fake news, and it isn’t going to go away without looking at it.