On Richard Jewell, Law, Order, and Ideology

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell is a sturdy, straightforward movie that is fairly well made and is buoyed by a few really great performances. It feels worth saying from the outset that Paul Walter Hauser, who plays the eponymous character, is really excellent in this. He deserves a Best Actor nomination, but he will not get one because he does not look like a movie star. (There are, for the record, lots of reasons why people don't get Oscar nominations; this just happens to be the reason Hauser won't get one.) Kathy Bates, who plays Jewell's mom Bobi, is much more likely to get a nomination. She has several really great scenes and is really wonderful throughout. Jewell himself is a strange character, and he is sort of hard to like, but Bobi is easy to like and easy to relate to.

Richard Jewell is the kind of movie I mostly like but that never winds up surprising me very much. Eastwood's tone is provocative and a bit procedural, and the film has the kind of repetitive documentary quality he attempted with Sully. This leads to a kind of detached form of viewing, I think. Everyone is good in this, and it's an interesting story. I liked it, but it's not really the kind of thing anyone can get excited about. The main guy is too weird to be a hero. What he is, instead, is a kind of victim of an enormous machine designed to take advantage of him.

Here's what I mean: Richard loves law enforcement. He loves "law and order". He follows the rules, believes in the rules, loves the rules. He trusts the government. He owns a dozen guns because he wants to be part of the club that maintains law and order and keeps people safe in the United States. But law enforcement themselves – and the film underlines this countless times – think Jewell is a boob. They take advantage of him; they talk down to him; they treat him like a naif (and he is one, though he doesn't need to be treated like one). Actual law enforcement also does not behave the way Richard thinks they do (Eastwood underlines this countless times, too): they are petty, devious, and lazy; they bend the rules; they don't care about the safety of regular people very much; they take the easiest way rather than the right way. Actual law enforcement would not have found the bomb in Atlanta that Richard Jewell found. They would have treated it like a backpack full of beer, and it would have done a lot more damage than it did.

If you think about it, Richard himself is a logical extension/embodiment of "law and order" ideas. He takes "law and order" seriously even though most of us do not. This is why the film likes him so much and why he feels like such a weirdo to everyone else. To me this is super interesting. Eastwood's movie, however, is not interested in these contradictions at all – he is telling a straightforward story about a lone hero, an evil newsmedia conglomerate, a corrupt government agency (the FBI), and the way that government and media can crush the little guy. In Eastwood's vision, the media are evil; the government is out to get you; but somehow law and order are still the ideal. The whole thing seemed confused – even tortured – to me. I really had to twist my brain in order to make sense of Eastwood's moral stance here.

I haven't said anything yet about the journalist Olivia Wilde plays. This portrayal/performance is... unfortunate. The media are, of course, the big bad villain in this story, and I get that, but Eastwood/Wilde portray the journo at the center of this story as a caricature of the self-serving reporter. Eastwood introduces the character in the most insane manner possible. She's bragging to the other women on the floor that their stories are insipid and readers only want the exciting copy she writes. She is gunning for television news. She's wearing short skirts and hoping for murders and scandal. She sleeps with an FBI agent for the story. She publishes information that ruins this guy's life. She is, in short, completely without ethics, integrity, standards, or human compassion until very, very late in the movie when she does an incredible (by which I mean I did not believe it) about-face. The whole thing is so caricatured that it doesn't appear the least bit realistic.

Richard Jewell is super interesting for all of these reasons. It's a perspective that is worth watching, even if it doesn't quite make sense or doesn't totally hold together. This is another of Eastwood's American hero movies (Sully, The 15:17 to Paris, American Sniper). I'm not a supporter of Eastwood's flag-waving at all, and I like my stories to be more complex than his Manichean version of the world allows, but there is a lot to talk about in Richard Jewell, and the performances are great.

[One more thing about the filmmaking. Sometimes in Eastwood's films, there are physical choices that make no sense at all – like that fake baby in American Sniper. There is one of those gaffes near the end of Richard Jewell when the FBI brings back all of Bobi Jewell's household items. The folks from the Bureau walk in the door in a line like a little color guard troupe carrying boxes and then they walk out in the same line into the apartment. Where the Hell are they going? This makes no sense at all. My sister and I both noticed it, and because it happened at the end of the movie it was the very first thing we talked about after the credits. There is only an exit in that direction if we're on a movie set, Mr. Eastwood. I know it makes your shot look cleaner, but it defies all logic.]