‘J. Edgar’

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench, Naomi Watts

Release Date: Nov. 11

1/5 popcorns

For all his skill and wisdom, director Clint Eastwood fails to realize the purpose of a biopic. It is not to simply recount and examine the facts and general accomplishments of the film’s subject. If one wants to know what qualifies J. Edgar Hoover as one of the most important figures of the 20^th century, a quick search on Wikipedia lays out that information.

Eastwood presents J. Edgar Hoover as the man we think we know him to be: a small, secretive and unappealing tyrant of American justice. Eastwood merely presents the facts without delving thoroughly into the more complex —and, boy, are they complex —aspects of his being, opting rather to concentrate on his hard fought success at the FBI.

Again, the average movie ticket today costs about $8.

Wikipedia is free.

A young but extremely smart, productive and ambitious bureaucrat, John Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) rises to power at the FBI, a disreputable organization that he would turn into one of the most powerful crime-fighting institutions in the world. Shattering innovations, like the advent of fingerprinting to identify and catch criminals, catapult him to national stardom, though he insists on maintaining an extremely low profile. He wants to be the most powerful man in America so terribly that he occasionally does more harm than good.

Hoover lives with his mother, Anna Marie (Judi Dench), until the day she dies. He struggles with fairly chilling attachment issues, like those in ‘Psycho.’ Not attracted to women, he endures a calamitous but still professionally rewarding relationship with FBI Associate Director Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), whom he clearly loves but cannot allow himself to touch.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t plump any of these fascinating issues with any depth whatsoever and largely ignores them. It doesn’t give the audience the slightest indication of how Hoover came to be such an enigmatic man. Eastwood dives right into the successful Hoover and structures the film by way of Hoover telling his story to multiple biographers. This stale and uncreative storytelling technique hints that Eastwood may be slowly eroding as a filmmaker.

Instead of probing Hoover’s fascination and terrifying admiration for his mother, Eastwood launches a long, clinical, Hoover-esque investigation into the solving of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. The storyline made for a nice anecdote, but positioned as Hoover’s primary conflict, it’s weak. Hoover’s relationship with Tolson is interesting but only played up to a fifth of its potential. Ripe intensity exists between the two men, but we do not see how their relationship affected Hoover as he grew old. A plethora of reasons could explain his dissatisfaction as an old man, but aside from what one can gather from his intolerable nature —the roots of which are never explained —the audience doesn’t really have a clue.

Though it may seem that Leonardo DiCaprio is continuing to challenge himself, he is not. DiCaprio is extraordinary as J. Edgar Hoover and the film’s saving grace. But his insistence on exclusively playing characters so deathly serious suggests his range might be rather limited. In each role following his fantastic performance in ‘Catch Me If You Can’ (2002), DiCaprio played a character on the verge of complete physical and mental collapse. It’s growing quite old. It is time for the screen icon of this generation to mix it up a bit. Now there’s a real challenge.

Capitalizing on the raves he received for his dual performance as the Winklevoss twins in ‘The Social Network,’ the 25-year old Hammer is terrific as Tolson in a great role that might have gone to Oscar winner Jeff Bridges. Eastwood took something of a chance on him and it paid off. Had Eastwood struck out on casting a compelling performer next to DiCaprio, the Wikipedia comparison might have even felt a tad too generous.  

smlittma@syr.edu

Published on November 15, 2011 at 12:00 pm