J. Edgar (***)

J. Edgar Hoover served the United States Department of Justice for over 50 years, the last 48 (1924–1972) as head of what was called simply the Bureau of Investigation when he joined. So it’s a daunting task to sum up that career in a two-hour film, as director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) have tried to do.

Hoover may be better remembered today for clashing with Bobby Kennedy and trying to discredit Martin Luther King in the 1960s, or for his long relationship with his assistant, Clyde Tolson. But he also created the modern FBI and brought a professionalism to the task of catching criminals, even as the methods he sanctioned stirred controversies that reverberate in these days of warrantless wiretaps and detention without trial. Black and Eastwood devote considerable time to the anti-communist Palmer raids, which made Hoover’s name, and to the Lindbergh kidnapping, which, when solved, solidified his reputation as a crime fighter. A fictional device—Hoover is supposed to be dictating a memoir—frames the 1920s, '30s and '40s segments and gives us Hoover in decline (but still wielding power) while skipping over the 1950s entirely.

The hoary flashback structure doesn’t reveal any notable contrast in the older and younger man, aside from the almost-convincing make-up job on DiCaprio. (In that regard, I thought Naomi Watts, as Hoover’s longtime secretary, and Armie Hammer, as Tolson, were more convincingly aged.) Insofar as Hoover’s view of himself and law enforcement were concerned, he seems to have emerged fully formed in his 20s. Watching the ever-confident Hoover in action is engaging, but rarely exciting. I wonder if a musical score would have helped. Hoover most comes to life in the personal scenes. He seems only to have been close to two people, his mother (Judi Dench), who made him courageous, and Tolson. Tolson, as played by Hammer, humanizes the Hoover character, and even if you have contempt for the man’s self-aggrandizing and legally questionable tactics, the singular devotion of these men seems creditable.

Eastwood takes no clear view on whether Hoover was justified, mostly presenting Hoover as he saw himself. He takes a middle road as to the Tolson relationship. It can scarcely be doubted that these men who dined together, vacationed together, and had no other serious relationships had a romantic attachment, and Black’s screenplay assumes that. However, given how little is known about how they behaved in private, the period of Hoover’s adulthood being an age when privacy was granted to public figures, it shows wise restraint as far as sexual matters. The audience is allowed to assume what they will as regards this while it is suggested that Hoover’s upbringing, his nature, and the times would have made him disinclined to violate propriety. If there is one thing that unites Hoover’s anticommunism, his distrust of agitators like King, and his fierce approach to ordinary criminals, not to mention his careful habits of dress and speech, it seems to be a true distaste for disorder or change.

IMDB link

viewed 1/11/2012 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/11/2012

Bobby (**1/4)

? Writer-director Emilio Estevez’s long-in-the-making labor of love features an all-star ensemble cast playing fictional characters who all wind up in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968, when Senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot to death following the California primary.

+ Without critiquing each of the half dozen or so storylines, I’d say that the two most noteworthy performances and/or characters are delivered by Sharon Stone, as an understanding hairdresser, and Lindsey Lohan, whose character is about to marry a young man (Elijah Wood) she doesn’t know all that well so that he can avoid going to Vietnam. Where an ensemble piece like this could easily descend into hokey melodrama, this is more like a slice-of-life film. For the doorman played by Anthony Hopkins, the day is mostly another occasion to play chess with an old friend (Harry Belafonte). For the boozy nightclub star played by Demi Moore, it’s another night of arguing with her manager/husband. Some of the storylines do intersect in unexpected ways.

- This is kind of like a highfalutin’ version of one of those disaster movies where we meet a bunch of characters, then twenty minutes later their cruise ship turns over or something and we get to watch them interact and try to save themselves. Only in this case, the beginning part is the whole movie and the disaster comes at the end, and then the movie just stops. Interspersed with the fictional events are historic footage of Kennedy, and the end is a montage of photographs of RFK at various ages, many also including JFK and Ted Kennedy. (This montage elicited a small cheer from the preview audience when I saw this.) If it hadn’t been for these insertions and the last ten minutes, the movie mostly could have almost as easily been set the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, or, for that matter, the day the Beatles released the White Album. It’s not that I think Estevez executed his idea poorly. It’s more like that, having watched this movie, the idea seems half-baked in the first place. Unless the storylines were truly going to be tied in to its ostensible main subject, then it just comes off as a cheap ploy to invest the story with significance. The only historical fact I learned from this movie was that the same day as the primary, Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale was trying to extend his historic streak of shutout innings. This provides the story for one character, a kitchen worker who has tickets to the game but is asked to work a double shift.

= **1/4 Maybe it’s just that I would have liked to actually see a movie about RFK himself, who would surely make a worthwhile subject for a feature film, but my impression was of some watchable moments adding up to less than their sum.

IMDb link

viewed at PFS screening