RICHARD JEWELL
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Billy Ray, based on the Vanity Fair article American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell by Marie Brenner & the book The Suspect by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen.
Principal cast:
Paul Walter Hauser
Sam Rockwell
Kathy Bates
Olivia Wilde
Jon Hamm
Mike Pniewski
Country: USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 131 mins.
Australian release date: 13 February 2020.
You’ve got to hand it to Clint Eastwood, the soon-to-be 90-year-old is still able to make compelling drama, both behind the camera and in front of it. This time, in Richard Jewell, his latest effort, he’s decided to stay behind the lens (unlike his 2019 release The Mule) to focus on the true story of a security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics falsely accused of bombing a rock concert during the Games. As in the recent Seberg, the film shows that sometimes law enforcement (in both these films it is the FBI) can be guilty of pre-empting someone’s guilt, with terrible consequences for the hapless victim. Some critics have seen this as Eastwood’s nod to the conspiracy theory that there is a ‘deep state’ plot involving the CIA, the FBI and other security agencies to unseat President Donald Trump from office, but that seems like an extremely long bow to draw from what’s on screen here. Richard Jewell is not the dramatic creation of some febrile mind but a story based on fact. It happened. Yes, naturally the writer will have taken a bit of licence to heighten the plot (more on this later) but the nuts and bolts of the script are true.
The eponymous Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) was an overweight, wannabe copper and a bit of a fantasist. Unmarried, he lived in a small flat in Atlanta with his momma, Bobi (Kathy Bates, nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her terrific performance). When we first meet him, he is working as a cleaner in the office of attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) but he says he wants to be in law enforcement. Bryant warns him to be careful, telling him that, “A little power can turn a person into a monster.” Some years later, we see that Jewell hasn’t heeded the advice and he’s sacked from his job as a college security guard for being overzealous in his policing habits. However, in the lead up to the Olympic Games, he once again found work in security. One night, in a park hosting a rock concert featuring various artists, he spotted a suspicious back-pack under a bench and sounded the alarm, shepherding people away from the site. After the device exploded, Jewell was initially acclaimed as a hero, responsible for saving many lives, until the FBI decided he was too good to be true and that he was in fact an egotistical publicity-seeker who had planted the bomb himself. When they couldn’t prove their theory, Agent Tom Shaw (a sleazy Jon Hamm) leaked it to Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), a muck-raking journalist, and Jewell’s life collapsed. Needing a lawyer, he rang the only one he knew, Watson Bryant.
Working with many of his usual technical crew again, including French-Canadian cinematographer Yves Bélanger and Oscar-winning editor Joel Cox, Eastwood hasn’t treated his subject in the standard police procedural manner but, rather, he and screenwriter Billy Ray have chosen to focus on the characters involved in the story; in other words, he has concentrated on the who, not the how. Indeed, we only learn who was ultimately responsible for the crime from a card before the closing credits. Hauser and Rockwell are sensational but Bates is the real knockout as the doting mum who can’t believe what is happening to her son. Olivia Wilde is excellent, too, but her role has been stereotypically written. Scruggs, who is deceased and hence can’t defend herself, has been portrayed as a person who will trade sexual favours with almost anyone to get ‘the story.’ It’s a lazy depiction that relies on that old sexist trope about a woman being either ‘a mother or a whore’ and it cheapens the narrative.
The real Richard Jewell lived under a cloud of suspicion for 88 days before the FBI somewhat reluctantly declared that he was no longer a suspect but, in the eyes of many, he remained guilty. Eastwood explained his desire to tell Jewell’s story by saying, “… I wanted to make this picture to restore Richard’s honour. Because it’s the everyday guy - who wants to be a police officer, of all things, to devote himself to the betterment of mankind - who does this heroic thing and then pays a heavy price for it. He gets thrown to the wolves.” And that statement should put an end to any comparisons with the resident of the White House.
Screenwriter: Billy Ray, based on the Vanity Fair article American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell by Marie Brenner & the book The Suspect by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen.
Principal cast:
Paul Walter Hauser
Sam Rockwell
Kathy Bates
Olivia Wilde
Jon Hamm
Mike Pniewski
Country: USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 131 mins.
Australian release date: 13 February 2020.
You’ve got to hand it to Clint Eastwood, the soon-to-be 90-year-old is still able to make compelling drama, both behind the camera and in front of it. This time, in Richard Jewell, his latest effort, he’s decided to stay behind the lens (unlike his 2019 release The Mule) to focus on the true story of a security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics falsely accused of bombing a rock concert during the Games. As in the recent Seberg, the film shows that sometimes law enforcement (in both these films it is the FBI) can be guilty of pre-empting someone’s guilt, with terrible consequences for the hapless victim. Some critics have seen this as Eastwood’s nod to the conspiracy theory that there is a ‘deep state’ plot involving the CIA, the FBI and other security agencies to unseat President Donald Trump from office, but that seems like an extremely long bow to draw from what’s on screen here. Richard Jewell is not the dramatic creation of some febrile mind but a story based on fact. It happened. Yes, naturally the writer will have taken a bit of licence to heighten the plot (more on this later) but the nuts and bolts of the script are true.
The eponymous Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) was an overweight, wannabe copper and a bit of a fantasist. Unmarried, he lived in a small flat in Atlanta with his momma, Bobi (Kathy Bates, nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her terrific performance). When we first meet him, he is working as a cleaner in the office of attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) but he says he wants to be in law enforcement. Bryant warns him to be careful, telling him that, “A little power can turn a person into a monster.” Some years later, we see that Jewell hasn’t heeded the advice and he’s sacked from his job as a college security guard for being overzealous in his policing habits. However, in the lead up to the Olympic Games, he once again found work in security. One night, in a park hosting a rock concert featuring various artists, he spotted a suspicious back-pack under a bench and sounded the alarm, shepherding people away from the site. After the device exploded, Jewell was initially acclaimed as a hero, responsible for saving many lives, until the FBI decided he was too good to be true and that he was in fact an egotistical publicity-seeker who had planted the bomb himself. When they couldn’t prove their theory, Agent Tom Shaw (a sleazy Jon Hamm) leaked it to Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), a muck-raking journalist, and Jewell’s life collapsed. Needing a lawyer, he rang the only one he knew, Watson Bryant.
Working with many of his usual technical crew again, including French-Canadian cinematographer Yves Bélanger and Oscar-winning editor Joel Cox, Eastwood hasn’t treated his subject in the standard police procedural manner but, rather, he and screenwriter Billy Ray have chosen to focus on the characters involved in the story; in other words, he has concentrated on the who, not the how. Indeed, we only learn who was ultimately responsible for the crime from a card before the closing credits. Hauser and Rockwell are sensational but Bates is the real knockout as the doting mum who can’t believe what is happening to her son. Olivia Wilde is excellent, too, but her role has been stereotypically written. Scruggs, who is deceased and hence can’t defend herself, has been portrayed as a person who will trade sexual favours with almost anyone to get ‘the story.’ It’s a lazy depiction that relies on that old sexist trope about a woman being either ‘a mother or a whore’ and it cheapens the narrative.
The real Richard Jewell lived under a cloud of suspicion for 88 days before the FBI somewhat reluctantly declared that he was no longer a suspect but, in the eyes of many, he remained guilty. Eastwood explained his desire to tell Jewell’s story by saying, “… I wanted to make this picture to restore Richard’s honour. Because it’s the everyday guy - who wants to be a police officer, of all things, to devote himself to the betterment of mankind - who does this heroic thing and then pays a heavy price for it. He gets thrown to the wolves.” And that statement should put an end to any comparisons with the resident of the White House.