J. Edgar Review

Our take on 2012's most divisive bio-pic film right here...

Great casting isn’t everything. If there’s one fact that I took away from my viewing of J Edgar, it was precisely that. Leonardo DiCaprio was rightfully lauded for his portrayal of J Edgar Hoover come the 2012 Awards Season, and indeed, his performance here is show-stopping once again to say the least. Between this, Django Unchained and The Great Gatsby, DiCaprio has pretty much proved that he can take on just about any role and flourish in it no matter what the controversy surrounding it or indeed the level of challenge. Nevertheless, here the esteemed American actor is a standout highlight in what could otherwise be viewed as something of an ‘average’ production, a non-event for the film industry that fails to live up to its promise.

J Edgar’s narrative predictably follows Hoover’s 1930s and ‘40s exploits for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the States, dealing with eras such as gangster warfare, the campaigns of the Ku Klux Klan and of course the various terms of Presidency the federal government came under in this period. For the most part, each and every historical event, regardless of its iconography and fame, is handled with a profound sense of reverence and respect from director Clint Eastwood, making the film as a whole often genuinely gratifying for history fans such as myself to watch. However, just as I noted recently that The Iron Lady was met with mixed reviews thanks to its level of pathos for its controversial protagonist, so too do I begin to understand here why the reception to this Hoover flick has been largely negative. Far from providing the fairly objective stance on its home country’s politics as the British production starring Meryl Streep did in my opinion, J Edgar holds an uneasy sense of bias towards many of the characters and events it encompasses, to the point that it’s difficult to argue that even the mindset of the titular FBI boss is reflected here.

The film’s portrayal of Richard Nixon in the late stages of its flash-forward sequences to Edgar’s final years is a notable instance of this shortcoming. Where perhaps this would have been an opportune moment to study Nixon as a man and truly assess the level of his corruption and indeed basic human failing, instead Eastwood and his writing team choose to use the audience’s knowledge of the infamous Watergate to immediately skew his viewers’ opinion of this character, portraying Nixon as a cold-hearted and ruthless power tyrant who will go to near inhuman lengths of apathy in order to retain power. Perhaps this was the truth of Nixon’s reign, perhaps not, but I would certainly have appreciated a level of ambiguity that allowed me as a viewer to fill in the gaps rather than have them filled with a pre-set mixture beforehand. Much of the success of recent DiCaprio flicks such as Inception and Shutter Island has come as a result of their unwillingness to be definitive, their inherent openness in their respective climaxes that the viewer witnesses in such a manner that they can make their own judgements on his characters’ fate. Here, it all feels just a little too concrete for this reviewer’s liking.

On the plus side, there’s a fantastic supporting cast to hold up what can often be an unfocused and imbalanced narrative. Judi Dench and The Social Network’s Arnie Hammer in particular shine as the mother who Edgar depends so heavily on and his homosexual ally Tolson respectively, although for British film fans it will no doubt feel as if the former’s appearance leaves a little to be desired, with Anna Hoover having little to do other than criticise her son. Again, perhaps such a representation of this character is true to form of what the real-life female figure in Edgar’s life was really like, yet again I don’t feel that the need to stay true to real-world concepts and constructs should necessarily always outweigh the strength of a film on its own merits. Indeed, we as viewers are not to know for sure that Thatcher does actually incur hallucinations of her deceased husband in her dementia, yet it adds to the quality of the movie as a whole, and thus such a rudimentary modification works magnificently in a way that J Edgar often seems afraid to aspire for.

All in all, then, J Edgar is something of a difficult film to rate. There’s ambition in terms of narrative scope, Eastwood’s visionary direction and indeed in casting here, yet it often feels as if as I mentioned earlier, the production team were a little too cautious in dealing with the real-world legacy of Hoover to take the genuinely exciting steps that could have been made to place an innovative spin on this iconic American figure. The Iron Lady came much closer to doing just that with the British legend it focused on, and turned out a much better film for it. While I would highly recommend this Eastwood flick to anyone with a keen interest in 20^th Century American History like myself, then, otherwise I’d advise a degree of caution when approaching J Edgar, because devoid of much of the foreknowledge and appreciation that this disappointing motion picture expects of you, you’ll be hard pressed to spend two hours even in the company of the enthralling Leonardo DiCaprio.

3/5