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

Drama sucked out of Sully

Aaron Eckhart and Tom Hanks in Sully. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

Sully shows how easy it can be to botch the story of a man saving 155 lives after crashing an airplane into the Hudson River. It manages to do so despite having an incredible real-life story to work from, a very capable director in Clint Eastwood, and professional nice guy Tom Hanks playing the eponymous pilot, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. Yet the film still boggles up a great story, exchanging the interesting tidbits of self doubt and crisis for a celebration of one man and creating a rather one-note and flat piece of cinema.

It's hard to pin down what Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki are trying to convey with Sully. The film has a habit of bouncing wantonly between points and changing narrative directions and tone for reasons known to the two men responsible for this film and no one else. It's quite odd, really, how the film opens with Sullenberger expressing self doubts about his actions and experiencing severe PTSD, only to drop them when the need apparently arises to honor the man. The final sequence is an outpouring of adoration for the man in the film's fictionalized universe and in reality via a short promo where Sullenberger literally stands behind an American flag boldly. In between the praises for Sullenberger is one of the worst final scenes in recent memory, a final moment that offers no catharsis or introspection or proper closure to a hypothetically emotional narrative. That leaves the man himself left out of the equation to bow to the collective cheers and applause from audiences. Perhaps the poor quality of the film itself is for the man's benefit; people cheering at the end credits are probably focused more on his incredible act of aviation brilliance than the abstract concept of a film that replicated it.

To be fair, the man has earned all of the accolades and praise he receives for that one feat of impossibility, as well as the right to have Hanks play him on screen. At this point in his long and terrific career, Hanks seems to have a fetish for portraying men of high moral values (or at least the perception of said values) who serve as shining beacons through the morass of the human soul. This isn't Hanks' finest performance – he is getting a little too close to self parody – but he offers the kind of performance one should expect from him, albeit not at the Hanksian level he reached last year in Bridge of Spies. That the people around him – a co-pilot played by Aaron Eckhart, the Great Laura Linney (tragically trapped on the other end of several phone calls), various union representatives – are designed more as cheerleaders than actual people doubles down on the need for an exceptional lead performance. Their main purpose is to offer comfort to Sullenberger from the external figures the film portrays as trying to “get” Sullenberger. Eastwood and Komarnicki almost make the characters of the NTSB panel investigating the crash (led by Mike O'Malley, Anna Gunn and Jamey Sheridan) mustache-twirling villains hell-bent on outing Sullenberger as a poor pilot. Making a government board a villain is a rather lazy plot point; having them almost immediately join the sides of angels at the end adds an extra level of screenwriting sloth.

Sully could be all about Sully if Eastwood and Komarnicki had centered it on the character and perhaps mentioned the crash without showing it on screen, and it appeared for a while they might indeed skip over the incident. The idea of not showing the crash into the Hudson is intriguing, allowing for a heavier focus on the central figure and letting the nightmares the man has about what happened serve as a reminder for the worst case scenario. Instead, Sully builds up to the crash (actually showing it twice from different, asinine perspectives), establishing the happy ending while reducing the fear evoked during the crash. Good filmmakers can wring drama out of events in which the audience knows the ending (The Walk does this brilliantly); taking so long to get there only decreases the tension. That Eastwood and Komarnicki do it once again exacerbates the initial problem and Sully’s most notable flaw; it’s tough to succeed as a drama when the dramatic moments lack intensity.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 96 minutes

Genre: Drama
 

Ask Away

Target audience: People who enjoy watching Tom Hanks embody human decency.

Take the whole family?: The crash sequences will get a little intense for kids, so keep within a year or so of the PG-13 rating.

Theater or Netflix?: Home rental is better, but don't pay for the IMAX experience if you do go out.

Oscar Odds?: It'd be a problem if this film earned a Best Picture nomination or anything related to the screenplay and directing. Depending on how the rest of the year shakes out, Tom Hanks might be the best best (and possibly a deserving candidate) for an individual nomination, and it could get a few technical nods to boot.

Watch this instead?: The gold standard for this type of film remains the unimpeachable United 93. Despite the collective knowledge of the fate of the eponymous flight, director Paul Greengrass teases the possibility of a happy ending, keeping the audience tethered to the action.