Fresh Reviews: "J. Edgar"

Rated R for violence, strong language and brief sexual situations.

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J. Edgar Hoover has been the subject of a number of movies in the past, but it's been a generation... or maybe more... since the last version, so I suppose it was time (and he's always worthy of another attempt). And I'm one of those who always looks forward to whatever Clint Eastwood decides to turn his talents to next. So I was really psyched to see this film. The movie turns out to be something less than it might have been... certainly not among the top Eastwood movies, but still intriguing and at times fascinating, even with all the flaws. Eastwood, I truly believe, is simply not capable of making an uninteresting movie.

We get virtually the entire career of J. Edgar Hoover here... from 1919 (when he was 24) to his death at age 77 in 1972. What made him the man he was (both in positive and negative aspects), his strange relationship with his domineering (to say the least) mother, his combination of paranoia and corruption as well as his innovations that advanced the science of crime detection, his somewhat confused sexual identity, his often adversarial relationships with various U.S. presidents... it;s all here, in an almost Tarantino-like series of scenes that keep moving backward and then forward again in time. In the process, we learn a lot about both the man, the country, and how both changed over those decades.

Now, I definitely liked this movie and would recommend it to almost anyone, but it was a long way from flawless, and I might as well deal with the faults first. I think it's always a problem when a biopic tries to cover an entire life in barely two hours... you get detailed sections on SOME aspects of Hoover's life, but others that deserved much longer treatment get barely a minute or two, enough to get you intrigued, then are never mentioned again... such as his struggles against the Kennedy family, Bobby in particular. Anyone familiar with that history can fill in the blanks, but someone learning about Hoover from this movie will probably be scratching their head more than once and asking "who was that person and why were they important?". I also was slightly disappointed at the way the film seems to want to lay every flaw in Hoover's personality and all of his paranoia at the feet of his mother. He may very well have been more than a bit of a "momma's boy", but I can't believe that it can all be explained away that easily. The film is an often absorbing study of a paranoid and conflicted man, but I still feel like the complete story of how he got that way has yet to be told. And the old-age make-up: talk about hideous. Dicaprio and Naomi Watts have it bad, sure, but neither of them can compare to Armie Hammer, who plays Hoover's long-time colleague (and rumored lover) Clyde Tolson. As an old man, he looks like he's wearing some kind of weird mask made largely of plastic that's been melted in an oven until it's way too tight for his face. That's he's still able to deliver such a fine performance underneath all of that is a true wonder.

Now, the good stuff. And there is plenty. The cast absolutely shines. Even though he's a long way from being the most likely choice, Dicaprio completely convinces you he's Hoover. he plays Hoover as a hateful man who's distrustful of everyone but his mother and a very few close associates, and yet doesn't make it easy to treat him as a TOTAL villain because of the pain and self-loathing you see constantly coming to the surface. Hoover was a man who, like his antagonist Richard Nixon, did some very positive things the effects of which are still felt today (in his case including the advancement of fingerprinting and forensics as tools of crime fighting... and how many crimes are solved today without forensics?), but also went off track so totally and so badly that the bad became his legacy. It's part of what makes his story more than a bit of a tragedy, as is his long-time relationship with Tolson. It's never explicit, and this film portrays Hoover as a man who may never have been entirely sure WHAT his sexuality was and never able to discuss it with friends, but his "more than" friendship with Tolson is a really touching love story in the end, and helps to make Hoover a bit more human, knowing that he was capable of caring about SOME other individual than himself so deeply. Hammer is wonderful as Tolson, too... and anyone who can give such a powerhouse performance in that make-up deserves SOME kind of award!

Also highly interesting is the relationship between Hoover and his life-long personal secretary Helen Gandy, played by Naomi Watts. Rejected by Hoover when he tries to "come on" to her, she nonetheless winds up with a personal relationship with him deeper than almost anyone else he knew in his life and lasting his ENTIRE life. And although the psychology of the mother-son relationship is rather doubtful, it's still fun to watch Judi Dench in the role: she actually reminded me of Angela Lansbury's controlling mother in the original "Manchurian Candidate". Eastwood's brilliance as a film-maker shines through again in all of the technical aspects of the film, with the cinematography in particular adding to the films ominous mood, and Eastwood's score is also top notch.

So ultimately this is a sometimes frustrating movie that won't entirely make you forget the potential it had to be better than it is. But there's just too much that it does right for you to dismiss it, either... in fact, the more I continue to think about it, I don't exactly change my mind about it not being Eastwood's best or thinking the flaws weren't flaws, but I do start to appreciate how well made it was and how much of it succeeds. It may not be a perfect movie, but it's still a very good one. But then, that shouldn't be surprising. It IS a Clint Eastwood film, after all.