Richard Jewell

— Eastwood does straight-forward films and I like that. He knows how to let characters develop and events unfold without rushing back and forth in time, and he ends up with films that are paced well. It’s just good film making and, with films like “Richard Jewell,” layered in such a way that at the end, there are lots of issues for viewers to consider. Jewell is something of a common man and certainly no hero, but he comes with many characteristics too many people make fun of—he’s overweight and has few friends, he wants to be a policemen and just doesn’t seem to have what it takes, he still lives with his mother, and the list goes on, but he means well and tries hard. The problem, of course, is that the story picks up not as he is bullied on the playground, but as an adult and by the FBI and the press. Jewell’s life is forever changed, not by truth, but by reporting and ethics gone awry. The film tells the story of Jewell and his mother and the whirlwind that swept around them when it shouldn’t have. By the end it’s hard not to think about the shift away from news reporting to opinion pieces, and away from factual pieces to those filled with suggestion and supposition, and to wonder how much worse it could have been today with social media mobs dispersing half-truths and adverse emojis. Mixed with that is the government’s treatment of Jewell, and their total disregard for his rights, and to wonder how much worse it would have been today, knowing the direction our government has taken. It’s hard to see the film, even knowing the story’s been fictionalized with aspects included that never happened and with gaps filled in for the sake of continuity, and not be a little appalled by what happened then and a lot worried about what could happen now. It’s a good film and worth seeing despite issues raised by its depiction of the journalist who broke the story.

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[2019. 129 min. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, and Kathy Bates.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/richard-jewell-movie-review-2019