Richard Jewell a deep character study undermined by politics

Sam Rockwell and Paul Walter Hauser in Richard Jewell. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

What's worrisome about Richard Jewell is how far down the rabbit hole director Clint Eastwood fell. The numerous splendid moments of filmmaking and the brilliance of the dive into the film's central figure is nearly overlapped by a pervading sense of paranoia from the director about bureaucracy conspiring against an average white man. This is Eastwood's millstone, an inability to see the humanity driving the institutions he fears.

Richard Jewell stars Paul Walter Hauser as the eponymous security guard, an unremarkable man who saves hundreds of lives after discovering a bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Despite the act of courage, Jewell's grandiose dreams and odd past behavior draw the attention of FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), who suspects Jewell planted the bomb himself to become famous. Shaw leaks the investigation to tenacious reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), which instantly turns Jewell from a hero to a villain. With the help of attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) and his mother Bobbi (Kathy Bates), Jewell fights against the forces opposing him to clear his name.

Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray dive incredibly deep into its central character to reveal a man whose shining moment of competence nearly ruins his life. Underneath the hushed voice and abundances of “sirs” is a man with a healthy ego and aspirations for mild greatness as a law enforcement official. Jewell is a legitimate hero who saved multiple lives, but Richard Jewell isn't afraid to show the human side – especially the ego – pushing that heroism. In an era defined by heroes who are so far above human realism they are barely relatable, it is pleasant to see a man's flaws result in an act of courage. To paraphrase an Emerson quote, the difference between a hero and ordinary folk is five minutes of courage, and the film mines a lot from that idea.

The humanity Eastwood and Ray provide for Jewell are not afforded to the forces opposing him. The battle in Richard Jewell is the fight between a decent guy and powerful institutions – government and the media – out to ruin his life, but the humans representing those forces come across as cartoonish in comparison. Shaw's motivations are flat and uninvestigated, his presence more stereotypical than nuanced. The film's portrayal of Scruggs, whose name was not changed for this film, is far more concerning. She's not only depicted not simply as a woman who is willing to sleep with a source for information, but a terrible journalist and even worse human being, celebrating the deaths of innocent people to advance her career. And despite the film's take on her reporting, her article was correct and had additional sourcing the film implies did not exist. 

Neither Shaw nor Scruggs should be a villain in this film. They were two people doing their jobs in the aftermath of incredible act of violence and terror, consumed by a need to rush for truth and information. They were human, yet Eastwood and Ray cannot find that humanity. This is becoming a trend for Eastwood, who took a similar approach with Sully. In both film, the actions of the main characters are impugned by governmental investigation to the point the terror of the initial actions are overshadowed by the bureaucracy. Even if the case against Richard Jewell was untrue, the idea the government overstepped by conducting an investigation is ludicrous. Yet this is the worldview Eastwood presents in Richard Jewell, a fever dream in which good white men are persecuted for their good deeds. These ideas permeate so deep into this film it overshadows some stellar filmmaking. The sequence when Jewell first finds the bomb through the inevitable explosion is filled with brilliant tension worthy of Hitchcock. Eastwood plays with the audience's knowledge that the bomb will go off, throwing in some hints of a timeline to mess with perspective and keep the actual moment of detonation a shock to viewers. That moment should be the film's centerpiece, yet Eastwood gets so lost in the ensuing legal issues the power of that moment becomes window dressing. Richard Jewell is a good film, but Eastwood pursuit of victimhood prevents his film from becoming anything more than that.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 129 minutes

Genre: Drama

tl;dr

What Worked: Richard Jewell, Paul Walter Hauser

What Fell Short: Secondary Characters, Politics, Lazy Foreshadowing

What To Watch As Well: Shattered Glass