Richard Jewell

 2/4

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Paul Walter Hauser, Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, Olivia Wilde

Rated R for Language including Some Sexual References, and Brief Bloody Images

I suppose that it is ironic that the main problem with a biopic is that I could scarcely believe a second of it.  This isn't a matter of massaging the facts to "make a better story."  All non-documentaries are guilty of that to one degree or another.  It's a matter of the film not getting me to the point where I could take any of it seriously.  Although the film boasts several strong performances, the weak writing and directing make this an eye-roller rather than an eye-opener.

Richard Jewell (Hauser) is a failed cop turned security guard who takes his job so seriously that it has cost him numerous jobs.  Now he is working as a security guard at the 1996 Olympic Games.  After telling off some drunk kids misbehaving, he spies a suspicious backpack underneath a bench.  He "does the right thing" and calls attention to it.  Most people don't take him seriously, but he turns out to be right.  Before the bomb can be defused, it explodes.  Richard is hailed as a hero, until FBI agent Tom Shaw (Hamm) finds out about Jewell's unsuccessful past and obsession with being a cop.  Shaw has a hunch that Jewell set the bombs himself so he could play the hero, and leaks this to an unscrupulous journalist named Kathy Scruggs (Wilde).  Now an innocent man has become a national pariah, and the only one who can help him is the only lawyer he knows: Watson Bryant (Rockwell).

Clint Eastwood has a habit of choosing good projects but doesn't always wait long enough for the script to get ready.  Films like "Mystic River," "Million Dollar Baby," "J. Edgar," and "Play Misty for Me" failed to varying degrees because they were underwritten, overwritten or some combination thereof.  "Mystic River" was all posturing posing as hard-boiled drama.  "Million Dollar Baby" was 90 minutes of Oscar bait cliches followed by soap opera.  And so on.  When he is working with a good screenplay, such as "American Sniper" or "Changeling," Eastwood can do amazing work.  But he needs a polished script, and that's not what he has with "Richard Jewell."  The whole thing feels contrived and artificial, despite being a true story.  Characters are undeveloped, scenes are included for emotional payoffs without set up, and so on.  It needed another run through the computer.

Inconsistent as he is a storyteller, Eastwood has always been able to cultivate skilled performances from his cast members.  Leading the pack is Paul Walter Hauser, who is dead-on brilliant as the title character.  Richard is dimwitted and overzealous to the point where you want to smack some sense into him.  But listen to his words carefully and watch how he says them.  "I was raised to respect authority," he says at one point.  His cognitive dissonance is so strong that he cannot accept the fact that people in law enforcement can be less than honorable.  Even when Watson points out the obvious.  For his part, Sam Rockwell is his reliable self, portraying a man who wants to help a man who is thick to understand what is happening to him.  Jon Hamm and Kathy Bates are solid.  The big surprise for me is Olivia Wilde.  The actress has never impressed me with her acting ability, but here she's relaxed and loose.  She's a scene-stealer simply because she feels like a real person.

By portraying the media as having been complicit in the smearing of an innocent man, Eastwood opened up his film to criticism as attacking journalists.  Particularly in an era when the President of the United States declares that any news that is critical of him to be "fake" or some kind of conspiracy.  It is a credit to Eastwood that he doesn't attack journalism any more than he needs to in order to tell the story.  Far more villainous is law enforcement, which is willing to all but take advantage of a man for their own gain.  There was very little evidence against Jewell, and most of that was circumstantial at best.  Leaking the story and then putting him under investigation should never have been allowed to happen, and Eastwood makes that abundantly clear.

"Richard Jewell" didn't move me or interest m in a way that I thought it would.  It's a shocking story that should have gripped me from beginning to end, but in the end, I felt more bored than engaged.