J. EDGAR – The Review

Big-budget Hollywood biopics are alluring in so many ways. In a single epic package, they offer history and gossip, public spectacle and private psychodrama, true-life tales of fame, fortune, ambition, and ruin. Yet there are so many ways in which a biopic can go wrong and with J. EDGAR, a listless history book of a film, director Clint Eastwood scores a rare misfire. It examines the life of J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo De Caprio) from his early days as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When the film opens in 1919, the agency was a part of the Justice Department with no funding, few police powers, and not even the capability to make arrests or carry firearms. J. EDGAR follows Hoover’s life all the way to 1972, when he died while still head of the FBI as we know it today. J. EDGAR is structured with the dictation of his memoirs to a succession of young agents resulting in a flashback and forth style narrative that, thanks to the inclusion of key historic events, never gets too confusing in terms of its time frame. For almost 50 years, Hoover had the ears of eight presidents, control over the press, and all of the force of the Federal Government at his disposal. Yet despite all of this rich history, much of the focus of J EDGAR seems to be questions about his sexuality. Of course there’s the irony that this powerful figure, so obsessed with other people’s secrets, was a closeted gay man who lived in fear of being exposed but way too much of the film’s running time deals with his perfectly bland relationship with longtime partner Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

It was Eastwood himself who sang the Johnny Mercer tune Accentuate the Positive during the closing credits of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL and he might have done well to take his own advice. Okay, we get it; Hoover was a mean-spirited vindictive man, a mama’s boy, a homosexual who was schizophrenic about his own sexuality, a woman hater, a xenophobe, a racist, a blackmailer, an anal compulsive monster who was strict about dress codes and appearance, a power-hungry opportunist who gained power over others through wiretaps and keeping secret files on them, and a puritanical obsessive paranoid who raged over the sexual conduct of others to the point of having no regrets destroying the lives of those whose ideas he disapproved of. He was molded by a gorgon of a mother who would “rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son” (Judy Dench spits out this great campy line in a scenery-chewing fit). But Hoover was also responsible for much good; instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology such as a centralized fingerprinting and forensic laboratories. He smoked out a good number of Commies and derailed German and Japanese agents’ interference with U.S. war efforts. He was instrumental in turning the fledgling bureau into the large and efficient crime-fighting agency it is today. J. EDGAR touches on these accomplishments but mostly chooses to emphasize the cons and was clearly written by someone with little respect for the subject. Perhaps screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (an Oscar winner two years ago for MILK) thought there was more drama to be mined from a contradictory look at the man, but in the end it makes for a disheartening and unpleasant experience. Hoover comes across not just as a cruel self-publicist, but as a lonely man racked with hang-ups and inhibitions.

J. EDGAR works best in its strong middle act when it focuses in detail on the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son in 1932 and the arrest four years later, after a sweeping investigation, of Bruno Hauptmann. In many ways, J. EDGAR is a bit too ambitious in scope and may have worked better if it had just focused on that on portion of Hoover’s career. Instead the film attempts to examine nearly his entire 48 year term as head of the bureau — beginning with his initial appointment to the Bureau of Investigation and his work growing and establishing what would become the FBI in the 1920s and 30s, before jumping ahead to his later life and career during the MLK, Kennedy and Nixon years. DiCaprio plays this jowly control freak with powerful seriousness. It’s an efficient, skillful performance that does anchor the film but the actor doesn’t always seem comfortable in Hoover’s skin. The problem is, and what people will be talking about, is the old man make-up. It’s not that it’s bad; it’s just up there on the screen way too much. DiCaprio plays old in J. EDGAR more than he plays young and the makeup becomes a liability. The actor is best in the earlier scenes when the young Hoover is supervising raids on aliens alleged to hold radical views, but as he ages, his performance begins to repeat itself. The makeup on Armie Hammer is even worse but, even in his early scenes, this young actor makes little impression as Tolson. J.EDGAR looks great and Eastwood directs with his usual sure hand but even if he had covered bases more carefully in this Oscar-hungry mega-project, chances are we’d still be asking questions about the fiercely complex Hoover who, as a subject at least, deserves better.

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars