Richard Jewell

Richard Jewell is a slickly made, well-acted film about a wronged man, which is what fueled so many Hitchcock pictures. Hitchcock knew that being accused of something you didn't do, and then threatened with imprisonment (or worse) because of it is an elemental human fear, like being buried alive. While Richard Jewell was directed by Clint Eastwood, who is a different type of director entirely than Hitchcock, it still carries that basic fear.

But while it's a good movie, the subtext is troubling. Jewell was a security guard stationed at Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In early scenes we see that he has always wanted to work in law enforcement, and that he was overzealous in some of his positions (he is fired from a job as a security guard at a college, for among other things, pulling over drivers).

If anything, Jewell is determined to a do a thorough job, and when he spots an unattended backpack, he follows protocol, much to the bemusement of other officers. But that backpack does contain a bomb, and Jewell's actions in alerting authorities and having people move away saved several lives. He is celebrated by the media.

But then Jewell becomes a suspect, as the college president that fired him alerts the FBI to his troubling past. Based on profiling, but no evidence, he becomes a suspect. This is leaked to the media, and suddenly Jewell's life is turned upside down.

Certainly Jewell was unfortunate, but the film puts this in stark black and white that I'm not sure is completely fair. Two villains are established. Jon Hamm is the FBI agent who is sure Jewell is guilty, and Olivia Wilde as a reporter who gets the scoop (in a controversial plot point, she gets Hamm to leak the story by offering him sexual favors--the real woman that Wilde is playing died and is unable to defend herself). Both of these characters represent two things that Donald Trump has vilified: the FBI and the news media (the college president is sort of a tertiary villain: academia).

But did either the FBI or the media act irresponsibly? We see the FBI employ tricks, such as bringing in a gullible Jewell on the pretense of making a training video. If that's true, that's deplorable, but since we can't be sure that the sexual quid pro quo was true, can we trust anything? The FBI had to investigate Jewell, based on what they knew. Wilde, as any good reporter would do, prints the facts as she verifies them, and it was a fact that Jewell was being investigated. The FBI or the media can't not do their jobs because Jewell seemed like a good guy.

So Richard Jewell is a political hot potato, and I'm sure that's why it didn't do great box office. But the strengths of the film should not be ignored. Paul Walter Hauser, as Jewell, is a revelation. He provides the character with extraordinary depth--there is no cliche in his acting. Sam Rockwell, as Jewell's passionate attorney, and Kathy Bates, as his mother, are also excellent. Wilde is given an impossible character to play, a cliche of the relentless, heartless reporter.

Eastwood is a capable director. Since we know (most of us, anyway) that a bomb is about to go off, it creates great tension in that scene (getting back to Hitchcock, it's the very example he cites about suspense--knowing there's a bomb about to go off creates much more suspense that just having a bomb go off). We get a complete sense of how Jewell's life was ruined, and there are even some funny lines, such as when Rockwell asks Jewell why he owns so many guns. "We're in Georgia," Jewell tells him.

It's a good flick, but I wish I could trust the facts.