By Vincent Abbatecola
Over the last few years, director Clint Eastwood has taken some stories about everyday heroism and made movies that focus on those narratives. He accomplished this with the emergency airplane landing on the Hudson River in “Sully,” but to lesser effect when chronicling the prevention of the 2015 Thalys train attack in “The 15:17 to Paris.” While it’s neat that Eastwood wants to bring these acts of bravery to theaters, they don’t always guarantee that there will be enough of a story out of which to make a movie.
His latest attempt at this, “Richard Jewell,” falls in between the quality of the two aforementioned movies. While the performances are enough to help the movie keep going from to time to time, the film tends to be hindered by a repetitive screenplay and bland direction.
In 1996, Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) is given a job as a security guard at the summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. While working at Centennial Olympic Park, he finds a bomb and is able to evacuate many people before it detonates. Although he’s viewed as a hero at first, the FBI soon labels Richard as a suspect, and he then must work with his lawyer, Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), to prove his innocence.
Despite the movie not being one of Eastwood’s best, the main reason for this movie not being a total loss is Hauser’s wonderful breakout performance. Hauser shows Richard’s resilience in following his dream of making it into law enforcement, presenting an individual who doesn’t have anything but the best intentions as he strives to protect others. As Richard is beset by confrontations with the FBI and media, Hauser shows his character’s unfaltering sense of calmness that let’s us know that he won’t be deterred by what people say about him, but will instead push forward to clear his name. After turning in comical supporting performances in “I, Tonya” and “Late Night,” Hauser shows a lot of promise as a dramatic actor and is sure to excel when he’s given another role of that caliber.
Rockwell imbues his role with the strong passion of his character searching for the truth to help Richard. He exhibits Bryant’s confidence of working a crowd and trying to get them to believe Richard’s side of the story, having you know that he would be someone whom you would want on your side to defend you when it seems like the world is against you.
Kathy Bates, who plays Richard’s mother, Barbara, has an emotional scene near the end of the film where her character speaks during a press conference, but she doesn’t have much of a chance to do a lot up until then. While she does everything that she can with the role, to have an actress of her talent pair up with one of cinema’s most iconic directors and not be given an opportunity to do more is a letdown.
Two other cast members who also have characters who aren’t that well-written is Jon Hamm, who plays an FBI agent, and Olivia Wilde, who plays “Atlanta-Journal Constitution” reporter Kathy Scruggs. While they’re both given a little more material with which to work than Bates, they still come off as one-dimensional.
The screenplay by Billy Ray, which is based on Marie Brenner’s “Vanity Fair” article, “American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell,” and Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen’s book, “The Suspect,” shows enough details when it comes to giving us the story of the bombing, and it will prove intriguing for those who don’t know much about this event. However, the film tends to get rather tedious with the many confrontations between Jewell and the FBI, with all of them playing out in similar ways, thereby removing a lot of the dramatic power that might have been there. There aren’t a lot of scenes that hook you with the dialogue, and with Eastwood’s movies having a tradition of being character-driven, a lackluster script is a flaw that his movies can’t afford.
While Eastwood is able to evoke some tension in the minutes leading up to the bombing, much of the movie tends to suffer from boring direction. The film doesn’t have many standout scenes, memorable images, or unique camera movements, which is a shame because Eastwood has shown throughout his legendary career that he’s capable of offering all of that in his movies. And, as far as emotion goes, it pretty much comes down to his cast to provide that when the story can feel somewhat lifeless at times. When Eastwood has material where there are many layers to the story, such as “Unforgiven,” “Mystic River,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Flags of Our Fathers,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Changeling,”“Invictus,” and “American Sniper,” he has more of an opportunity to show his directorial skills because there are many facets of the narrative to explore.
“Richard Jewell” is a passable attempt at getting people to know about the titular hero, but this movie isn’t one of the jewels in Eastwood’s filmography.
I don’t think your assessment of the portions of the movie that you discuss are wrong, but it seems you missed the key take away points that were impactful and would, IMO, raise this to at least a middling “B” rating. This story was less about the characters than it was about the human tendency to latch onto an easy answer. It gives us comfort to have a quick solution to frightening or difficult problems. It is also a story about how easy it is for smart people, under pressure, to convince themselves of these things and convey those perceptions upon others.
I don’t know the author of this review, but I sense that maybe these events happened before you were old enough to be impacted by them. What Eastwood did, for me, is to remind me of how I bought into the inaccurate perceptions hook, line, and sinker then. And when this movie was announced, my first thought, literally, was “Wasn’t he the Olympic bomber?” I actually had to google to check my memory.
Again, your analytical review of the characters and dialog are not wrong, but, at least for me and my generation this came across as a powerful message to remind me to think for myself. Not to jump to easy conclusions, and the impact that doing so can have on real people.