The Movie Room

Richard Jewell 2019, directed by Clint Eastwood

Rating: 9/10

Richard Jewell is definitely one of the Clint Eastwood films that I liked a lot better than many critics seem to (see also Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Changeling). The directing is solid as always, the acting is top notch, and overall it just really works for me even though I do recognize its faults, especially the big Olivia-Wilde-shaped one.

Of the things that work best for me in this film, I think it is (most of) the acting. Paul Walter Hauser is one of my very favorite working actors and any time he shows up in a movie I get very excited, so for him to be playing the lead in a Clint Eastwood film was like a dream come true for me. And then he did not disappoint! Hauser is fantastic as Jewell, giving this real man such complexities and making me feel for him even if I don’t particularly agree with a lot of his beliefs. Jewell is given such a twisting journey, as is true from real life, and Hauser is just masterful at playing him at every single level for every single part of his chaotic experience from zero to hero to villain and everywhere in between. Ably (and Oscar-nominated) supporting Hauser is Kathy Bates as his mother. Bates is always amazing, but her work here is definitely among her best. There are multiple scenes here where she broke my heart and it feels borne out of real emotion and human suffering instead of the usual histrionics or emotional manipulation. As Jewell’s lawyer, Sam Rockwell also does an amazing job. I really love Sam Rockwell, though he does occasionally go a bit too broad in his performances (like, in my opinion, his Oscar-nominated turn in Vice as George W. Bush). Here, Eastwood uses both Rockwell’s groundedness and his broad instincts to great advantage. He goes back and forth between both modes, but instead of feeling inconsistent it helps to add to the rollercoaster emotions of Jewell’s real life experiences.

Olivia Wilde is not bad in her performance here, so she does not detract from the other performances, but her character is just written and conceived so poorly. This entire film is about Jewell’s experiences when he saved many lives at the Atlanta Olympics by calling in a suspicious looking bag and then how he was slandered in the press and how such slander is extremely damaging and un-American. To then use this film to slander a real-life journalist and accuse her of sleeping with sources for intel feels despicable. The way her character is written corrupts the whole message of the film and gives it a gross misogynistic feel. 

If not for the slander against the journalist involved, this film would be a solid 10/10 for me. The use of slander in a film that is so anti-slander makes me feel like I should rate this much lower because it is such a betrayal of what the film is saying and cheapens everything around it. But I can’t help but get sucked in every time I watch this movie and everyone (including Wilde) is doing such great work, that I think it deserves the overall 9, but maybe just with an asterisk attached. Compared to Eastwood’s other film about a real-life terrorist attack being thwarted by regular people, this movie is definitely far superior.