Posted on 12/14/2019 10:24:12 AM PST by gaijin
Years ago a professor of film studies told me that "Breaking Away" was one of the best "coming of age" films he'd ever seen because it didn't involve sex, but rather a boy being disillusioned with his cycling childhood heroes.
"Richard Jewell" is in many respects a coming of age movie. Most people know the story: Atlanta Olympic Games security guard Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser), who had been fired from a police department and from a college for excessive enthusiasm, finds a bomb in a backpack left at the Atlanta Centennial venue. He calls the police, assists in moving people away, thereby saving lives, and is at first branded a hero.
But the FBI, led by Agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm in a superb bad-guy role) and Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde, who sleeps with Shaw to extract the information that Jewell was a suspect) are convinced that Jewell is the bomber.
Here is where the plot deepens. Director Clint Eastwood doesn't pull punches with Jewell, showing his incredible naivete, his simplicity, and his quasi-redneck existence. Jewell does not perceive at first that the FBI is after him, and tries to be as supportive as possible. The line "I'm law enforcement too" (probably repeated more than "With great power comes great responsibility" in Spider-Man) is Jewell's theme . . . except it's not true. It's what Jewell wishes he was.
Shaw immediately perceives that and plays on Jewell's incredible innocence. The FBI brings in Jewell for a "training video," asking him to sign away his rights as apart of the video! Then and only then does Jewell finally get suspicious and asks for his lawyer.
Fortunately for Jewell, he only knows one lawyer---Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), whom he knew in a previous job. As we learn from Jewell, Bryant was the only one at that job who took Jewell seriously and who did not make fun of him. Indeed, Bryant nicknames Jewell "Radar" for his attention to detail.
Slowly, Bryant convinces Jewell that the state (especially the FBI) is not his friend, nor even an honest investigative party, but a lynch mob, a witch hunt convinced of its target with insufficient evidence.
Jewell comes of age when he realizes that it is NOT that he isn't "Law Enforcement," but that the "law enforcement" agencies that he had idolized and believed in all his life did not exist any longer, if they ever existed at all.
That is the power of "Richard Jewell." I think I speak for millions of Americans who once looked up to the FBI, likely from the weekly propaganda of the "FBI" television show with Efram Zimbalest, Jr. While the aura of the CIA as a heroic and pure band of anti-communists has long ago been removed ("13 Hours," "Charlie Wilson's War", "American Made") the FBI still maintained some reputation as the guys who fought Dillinger and the Mob.
But "Richard Jewell" shows that those images we all held were naive at best and dangerous at worst. The FBI tramples every civil right in the book, persuading Jewell to do a taping of a bomb warning, bugging his house, trying at first to deny him a lawyer. There is no possibility in the minds of the FBI agents that Jewell is innocent, even when it is proven he could not have made the call to the police and been at Jewell's location. (When Scruggs finally tests this theory, at least she was humbled by it and changes her mind---but does not print a retraction.)
In short, "Richard Jewell" is a movie for our time because on a micro level it encapsulates exactly what we have watched happen to President Donald Trump on a macro level: a politicized group of agents, completely biased and prejudiced to their own outcome, rig a case to frame someone without a shred of evidence. Anyone who says the movie is about anything else is not paying attention.Most of all, the film says in mirror form that if they can "do it to Richard Jewell, they can do it to Donald Trump, even if he's president."
Eastwood's specialty is character studies---Billy Munny, Sully Sullenberger, Earl Stone. In Richard Jewell he found a great character, played in an Oscar winning performance by Hauser, who could be Jewell's twin brother. While Hamm and Rockwell and Kathy Bates (as Jewell's mother, Bobi) deliver solid performances, Hauser has the viewer thinking he is just a simpleton until he finally boils over after a tongue-lashing by Bryant. It is then we see that it is Jewell's loss of faith in the whole system he has defended that is really eating at him.
Most of all, Eastwood subtly reveals the contempt the elites--whether reporters or bureaucrats---have for common people, whose lives they freely destroy with no comeuppance. The most unsatisfying part of the film is that neither Scruggs nor the FBI in general nor Shaw individually were ever held to account for their heinous actions against a true hero. For these and many other reasons "Richard Jewell" is a must see this holiday season.
Oh wait, no one on FR EVER reads the entire article.
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You do know that’s why headlines were invented, right?
Besides, why bother with all that reading when a guy can simply comment on someone’s comment. That way, nothing is ever really off topic.
+1 = It is so much more fun to match wits with the witless.
I was on another forum this morning droning how the police are glorified revenue enhancement agents. I even had a local law enforcement agent tell me I was right but slapped me down for painting with a broad stroke. Our local government is more worried about revenue than apprehending criminals.
Besides, why bother with all that reading when a guy can simply comment on someone’s comment. That way, nothing is ever really off topic
Oh wait, no one on FR EVER reads the entire article.
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You do know that’s why headlines were invented, right?
+1 = It is so much more fun to match wits with the witless.
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If it wasn’t for the witless like me, the witted wouldn’t know to feel spayshul.
So, the smart people owe the dummies like me because we’re what make them.
Saw it first day.
5 Stars.
Thanks, Larry
Did anyone else happen to notice that the ‘Richard Jewell’ film was one of the sponsors of today’s Army/Navy game ?
That dude could do better. #nohomo
Thanks for the excellent review. The movie is in my Netflix queue and I’ll watch it soon after the DVD is released to the public. Looking forward to it.
In Austin, it’s playing in a low-key “art house” theater. I’m sure I saw ‘3:10 to Paris’ in the same one. It’s not a big movie, but it builds as Jewell slowly comes to the realization that the officials he is trying to help in the investigation are using every he gives them to build a case against him.
I think David Koresh was nuts. That’s just my opinion, however. But he proved that the power and resources of the Federal government were unequal to the task of getting their man without first killing every other man, woman, and child around him!
IOW, the entire affair did not show smart Koresh was as reveal how colossally inept the DOJ could be—with tragic consequences—when given the opportunity.
My comment isn't specifically directed at you. It's more frustration that people are that dangerously stupid to believe that just because someone is delusional, and has managed to attract followers, that somehow it's OK for our "law enforcement" to murder them.
Yes, exactly!
I agree; Koresh was smart, charismatic and nuts. Certain aspects of their beliefs strike me as unfair and unreasonable to his followers.
I think his followers were simply credulous, 95% were not nuts, simply under his spell.
Yet BEHOLD now, how at least 50% of the country is under a different spell at a different time.
It seems that even good people can fall victim to this.
Did they deserve to all burn to death?
Not in a million years.
Eastwood understands...
Took my son to see it this evening.
It was an exceptional film. Heartbreaking what this man went through.
Elites treat everyday American like dirt... I'm thankful Eastwood had the freedom to make a movie like this...
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