When any production team starts to envision a biographical film, the first question that needs to be asked - and answered - is: "Why should anyone in the audience care about this person?" Whether the intent is for the person being portrayed to be sympathetic (Harvey Milk in Milk) or the subject of abject scorn (Eileen Wournos in Monster), the audience needs to have some emotional investment and connection at the end of the movie. J. Edgar, the Clint Eastwood biopic of the late FBI director, brutally fails in this regard.
J. Edgar doesn't fail from the acting. Indeed, strong performances from both Leonardo DiCaprio (as John Edgar Hoover) and Armie Hammer (as Hoover's lifelong right hand man, Clyde Tolson) will probably gain recognition in the upcoming film awards season. They both provide energetic portrayals of their characters, and do as much as possible with lukewarm script material that never gains altitude. Certainly, it's not without precedent to award an actor for a great performance in a flawed film (See: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart). That the entire cast can overcome a crappy script is as much testament to the abilities and expertise of the cast as it is the director.
And truthfully, I'm not sure that J. Edgar left me feeling cold because of the script. I've sat through movies that had atrocious ho-hum scripts (Titanic and Star Wars come immediately to mind), yet stood and applauded when the credits rolled because of the higher concepts behind the films that emotionally engaged me, even though the dialog was...umm...less than stellar.
After spending some time thinking about it, I believe the true failing of J. Edgar is in the editing. It's not often that I invoke bad editing and film continuity when I'm doing a post mortem on a movie. But this is a movie that should have worked. That it didn't work is principally because of the editing. A lot of the connecting dots in this story were apparently left on the cutting room floor, and the sequencing of many scenes that made it into the film needed tweaking. Perhaps if Eastwood releases a director's cut on video in the future, he can remedy these problems.
More on this (and spoilers) below the flip.
J. Edgar Hoover is a name that is synonymous with the FBI. He was a driven, paranoid man, and arguably the architect of the "surveillance state" that America has become. A rabid anti-communist, Hoover led the crime bureau, one that he created in his own image, from the 1920's until his death in 1972.
Along the way, Hoover made many enemies. One of the centerpieces of the movie was the secret, personal files that Hoover maintained on many famous and politically powerful people - essentially, blackmail material - to ensure that a) Hoover kept his job, and b) the FBI received the level of funding and political support that Hoover deemed necessary.
Hoover's personal life was one of inner turmoil and sexual confusion, which the film posits was the result of a domineering mother (played by an eerie Judi Dench, who seems to be everywhere these days). Over the years, there have been many theories regarding Hoover's sexuality (he was a closeted homosexual, and possibly a cross-dresser), but no one ever came forward to confirm either accusation. What is clear in the film, though, is that he compensated for his repressed sexuality by being a driven workaholic.
Leo DiCaprio's portrayal of the elderly Hoover is very close to how I remember Hoover in mid-60's and early 70's public service messages from the FBI. Overall, DiCaprio continues to build his portfolio of excellent acting, and his interpretation of Hoover's younger personality is very believable. There are several scenes (including a physical fight in a hotel room with Hoover's lifelong confidante Clyde Tolson, with a "kiss-and-make-up ending") that would have been difficult for any actor to pull off with credibility. Both DiCaprio and Armie Hammer (as Tolson) cut through their roles like a hot knife through butter.
At the end of the movie, though, I didn't care about Hoover. He was neither a sympathetic or detestable character in the movie, and that's the biggest failing of the entire production. I suppose I could have even given Eastwood's team a pass on that aspect of the film if there weren't huge chasms of information that were almost begging to be filled in, particularly as the elderly Hoover dictated his semi-fictitious and exaggerated memoir to an assistant.
What this movie lacked, above and beyond asking for any emotional investment from the audience, was storyline continuity that made sense. I suppose this was in part because of the fitful script, but more importantly, blame can be assigned to the editing.
The Lindbergh kidnapping segment was yawn-inducingly long, and could have been cut significantly simply to reduce the length of the film, which clocks in at an unnecessarily lengthy 2:17. If nothing else, the last ten minutes of the movie after Hoover's death (with a horribly miscast Christopher Shyer as Richard Nixon ordering H.R. Haldeman's "plumbers" to seal Hoover's office and seize Hoover's personal files) should have been broken into two parts, with the first five minutes moved to the beginning of the film, and the last five, with Naomi Watts as Hoover's assistant Helen Gandy - furiously operating the shredders in the Hoover Building basement - remaining at the end. There are many other editing gaffes in the film that simply didn't sequence properly, and as a result, the continuity of the entire movie suffered tremendously. Again, I hope that Eastwood can correct these flaws in a "directors cut" that will surely come to video soon.
Another element of J. Edgar that didn't really work was the aging transformation makeup artistry. This film spans Hoover’s professional life, a period of nearly 50 years. DiCaprio’s transformation as Hoover in his later years was at least somewhat cosmetically acceptable, but the aging of Tolson, Hoover’s mother, and Gandy were almost laughably awful. I can’t see James Cameron having made the same kind of mistake if he was in charge of production. He wouldn’t have put up with it. Eastwood did.
J. Edgar felt like it was rushed to the screen six months early, and it was not ready for release. I suppose with the upcoming Christmas films that will be filling theaters, plus getting in ahead of the awards season calendar cutoffs, releasing the film in the second weekend of November was about the only big budget movie release scheduling that made sense to Warner Brothers.
Still, the production team should have taken the time to get it right. J. Edgar could have been great. There was a wealth of material to draw upon, the acting was generally excellent, but at the end of the day, I didn't care about John Edgar Hoover, his egomania, or his unrequited love of Clyde Tolson. That's the biggest mistake that any biopic film producer can make. I would have rather waited to watch J. Edgar on the Sundance Channel (where it belongs) than wasting my money on a theater seat.