Richard Jewell (2019)
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Richard Jewell Movie Review
Richard Jewell is a 2019 biographical drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates. It’s a pretty good flick.
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“You ready to start fightin’ back?“
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During the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, security guard Richard Jewell discovers a suspicious backpack under a bench in Centennial Park. With little time to spare, he helps to evacuate the area until the incendiary device inside the bag explodes. Hailed as a hero who saved lives, Jewell’s own life starts to unravel when the FBI names him the prime suspect in the bombing.
This is a very important anti-FBI story that showcases just how miscalculated and unfair the system can be, and how one man’s life can be ruined in the process. It’s such an important story in fact, even more so now than ever before having in mind how divided the US society truly is politically as can be evidenced by this film’s reception.
It’s unfairly criticized and quite underrated because the media are all leftists while Clint Eastwood himself is a rightist. But I never got any Trump propaganda from him in this film whatsoever. What I got is a narrow, personal story of this one man, his mother and the man who helped him. All of it was so well crafted, culminating in such an emotionally powerful third act.
Paul Walter Hauser is terrific in the main role, and he should receive more roles after this very showy one where he did deliver in spades. He made his character more than just a buffoon, but a genuine, suffering human being. Sam Rockwell is as good as he always is, and I loved the relationship between the two. And Kathy Bates is outstanding as Richard’s poor, devastated mother. She killed it in a very emotional role, and thus she deserved her Oscar nomination.
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Richard Jewell is a good movie overall, but it is not great owing to its narrow focus and an unwillingness to portray the anti-gay and anti-abortion terrorist who really bombed the place. It is a film that is a bit too intimate, and it needed to have been more ambitious in themes and scope. The cinematography, the direction and the entire look of the film is also very cheap and television-like. But still, it’s Eastwood’s best film in years.
Richard Jewell looks cheap and television-like, and it also might be a bit too personal and lacking ambition in themes and scope. However, this is still Eastwood’s best movie in years due to terrific performances from Paul Walter Hauser and Kathy Bates, an important story that needed to be told and a very touching third act.
