The Blu-Ray copy of J. Edgar reviewed here was provided by Warner Brothers in conjunction with the Blu-Ray Elite program. To learn more, check out my Blu-Ray reviews of The Matrix, Inception, Contagion, and Crazy, Stupid, Love.
How can a film about one of American history's most powerful and unusual individuals be so limp? Let's count the ways...
Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar is a well-intentioned and technically proficient film, but it's a total dramatic misfire. It all starts with Dustin Lance Black's weak script, which takes the viewer out of the film from the start with its lame framing device—the all-too-familiar "old man recounts his life's story" method. Things don't get much better, as J. Edgar plays out much more episodically than you're average biopic (which, mind you, is saying something). It's as if Black, without real regard for his subject matter, simply tried to replicate the success he had with Milk. These are two wildly different individuals, with polar opposite stories, and the directors of the respective films operate in two very different styles.
Eastwood is a meat and potatoes filmmaker. Sometimes his brand of unfussiness works (see his mid-2000s boom, which includes Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and his pair of Iwo Jima films). Lately, however, it's been coming across as a little sloppy. Take Invictus, for example. Now I actually gave the film a solid review back in 2009, but there's no denying Eastwood's approach to filming Anthony Peckham's script stripped it of every ounce of nuance (see the scene of Pienaar visiting Mandela's prison cell, which despite being a truly moving experience in person, is just totally overdone here).
In J. Edgar, his sense of time and place is actually quite strong, as the film looks and feels right out of the early part of the last century. That said, he doesn't find any subtlety in Black's script. Maybe there isn't any there (that wouldn't surprise me at all), but then it's his job to create some. In lieu of that, it becomes DiCaprio's responsibility. He also fails. Right on down the line, those participating in this film strike out when it comes to telling Hoover's fascinating story in as compelling a way as it deserves. What could and should be something akin to Robert DeNiro's crazy underrated The Good Shepherd ends up feeling more like last year's The Iron Lady—insincere awards bait.
Again, I'll give the film credit for looking and sounding quite good. Here, Eastwood produces his best original score in years, and the production design and moody cinematography transfer exceptionally to the small screen. The special features on the Blu-Ray are bare bones; in fact, there's just one featurette. J. Edgar: The Most Powerful Man in the World is an interesting enough little behind-the-scenes doc that mixes archival footage of the film's subject with interviews of Eastwood, Black, DiCaprio, and others describing the film they thought they were making, rather than the J. Edgar that actually exists.
Biopics, I'll admit, are not my cup of tea, so J. Edgar was already behind in the count when I sat down to watch it last fall. But I'm also something of a history junkie, so while I'd have much rather watched a documentary about Hoover, the subject matter alone should have been enough that'd I'd be able to give it a passing grade. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and a second watch wasn't much kinder. This is Eastwood's second consecutive major misfire (after minor hits and misses like Changeling, Invictus, and Gran Torino, he bottomed out with 2010's Hereafter, and now this). Not sure what he has in mind next (A Star is Born remake with Beyonce, perhaps?), but let's hope he takes a well-deserved break and figures out how to regain his directorial mojo. I no longer look forward to Eastwood's films, and that's a damn shame.
0 comments:
Post a Comment