Film Review: Richard Jewell
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Even movies made with all the sincerity in the world can themselves fall prey to an agenda. Clint Eastwood directs Richard Jewell, a biopic about a man who was falsely implicated in the bombing during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, GA. In aiming his gaze at the story behind a rather sensational moment, Eastwood has crafted a movie that sits alongside our current moment of journalistic inquiry, though it doesn’t have much to say.
Richard Sherman, played by the very great Paul Walter Hauser, is a well meaning Georgian with dreams of being a police officer or FBI agent. He frequently gets stuck with jobs below his station (in his mind) and has been let go from several jobs like campus security guard. He ultimately ends up working the Olympics in Atlanta, helping monitor the grounds of the concert in Centennial Park, finding the bomb that would evntually blow up. What heroics he was able to do was soon overshadowed by reports that he might be the bomber and an FBI investigation that upends his life.
In Clint Eastwood’s attempt to valorize this well meaning white man, he turns the people “against” him into caricatures. I think there is room to paint characters as villains to the heroes story without the character also coming off poorly. Olivia Wilde plays Kathy, and AJC reporter who by all accounts was loud and brash and always ready to get the story. She also published the story that ended up cause Richard Jewell to be under intense scrutiny. This movie takes those traits and ramps them up to 700. Kathy makes jokes about getting a boob job to get more work, prays to god her thanks for getting a story when people are dying, and most egregiously, offers to sleep with an FBI agent to get a tip on who they are investigating. Journalistic integrity aside, this is just a terrible characterization and one of the worst female characters put on screen this year.
More than just this, Eastwood and company seem to just be resting on their laurels and the movie never quite picks up any steam, outside of a superbly staged bombing scene. There just doesn’t seem to be much life in the movie and it rivals The Irishman for never ending movieness. This is perhaps due to the fact that in a time when the press is doubted at every turn and is slowly being turned into a villain by the administration, a noted conservative filmmaker tackles a tale about press irresponsibility. The movie has been in development for a while but its hard to not pick up on these real life details, which Richard Jewell can’t overcome.
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