Richard Jewell (2019)

By: Mike Ward on Saturday, January 04

R Running Time: 131 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

The story of Richard Jewell is fascinating and long overdue for a cinematic re-telling.
The breakout lead performance from Paul Walter Hauser is something special.
Some will appreciate Richard Jewell existing within a commentary on how the media and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted and the ways those entities can chew people up and spit them out.

NO

Others will find it exhausting that Richard Jewell exists within a commentary on how the media and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted and chew people up, spit them up, and are essentially an enemy to watch out for at all times.
The entire Olivia Wilde subplot is gross. Unnecessary and gross.
Works through its steps with a slow, elder precision which may cause some people to check their watch and anticipate a more urgent and compelling approach to the Richard Jewell story.

OUR REVIEW

The tragic story of Richard Jewell, a security guard and former police officer, who was publicly whiplashed from “hero” to “villain” in astonishing time, provides the framework for Clint Eastwood’s latest film. Richard Jewell walks us through a somewhat true/somewhat fictionalized look at Jewell’s discovery of a mysterious package in Atlanta’s Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

In a breakout performance as Jewell, by Paul Walter Hauser (I, Tonya, BlacKkKlansman), Eastwood’s film is a measured, labored affair that tackles far more than just the story of Jewell. Before the film’s end credits arrive, screenwriter Billy Ray gets in his shots at the news media and the FBI, muddying a fascinating story that almost writes itself.

For much of Richard Jewell, Eastwood is cruising through a fascinating tale. Richard is the forgotten guy, the nice guy who people seem to never have time for. Puppy-dog loyal, he is keenly aware of people’s actions, traits, and characteristics. In an early scene, he notices that attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) loves Snickers bars and replaces them when he sees he is running low.

We are frequently provided reminders that Richard not only has a lock-trap memory with things he sees and hears, but also an unquenchable fascination with being respected as a law enforcement officer. He loses a campus security job for overstepping his job responsibilities, then reminds anyone he can that he is “law enforcement too” when he takes for-hire security jobs and bounces from opportunity to opportunity.

Eastwood exhibits great affection for Jewell and guides us along the steps of how he would become the most beloved and hated man in America within a very short span of time. As an AT&T security officer, Jewell discovers a strange backpack underneath a bench near a sound tower in Centennial Park. Instantly, he knows something is wrong. And in just one of a handful of examples that Eastwood and Ray show us, Jewell is viewed as something of a joke, working extremely hard to have his fellow security personnel take his concerns seriously.

As we all know, despite efforts to clear the scene, the backpack bomb is detonated and over 100 people are injured and two people died from their injuries. Jewell was heralded as the man who found the device and the media swooned. Within hours of his story coming to light, he is on the news and offered a book deal. Confounded by the attention, Richard and his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates) find themselves in a whirlpool of media attention they don’t know how to handle.

Seemingly within days of Jewell’s heroism being the lede on cable news and in newspapers around the country, news breaks that the FBI is looking at Richard as the main suspect in the bombing and everything unravels for Richard and his mother at breakneck speed.

Richard Jewell is largely well-made, Eastwood confidently, assuredly moving from scene to scene, staying out of the way and letting an impressive ensemble of actors hit their marks. Hauser is terrific in scenes with Bates, equally as fantastic opposite Rockwell, who steps in as Richard’s attorney through the criminal proceedings. Jon Hamm is cocky and bulldoggish as an FBI agent locked in on Richard as the assailant, and Nina Arianda has some winning moments as Rockwell’s legal assistant.

However, one major blight on the film involves Olivia Wilde’s character, Kathy Scruggs. Scruggs, a reporter with the Atlanta Journal Constitution who broke the story that Jewell was a suspect, is presented as an incessant, manipulative reporter, willing to jump into people’s cars and surprise them with a conversation, as much as she is willing to throw around the notion that she would get breast implants to advance in her career.

Sadly, and I would argue unnecessarily so, the entire premise Richard Jewell is built upon is that Scruggs slept with Jon Hamm’s FBI character for the scoop that changed the focus of Jewell’s reputation as hero to possible murderer. Scruggs’ dalliance is, from all accounts, an outright fabrication. As are numerous other details involving her character and her actions.

What begins to emerge is that Eastwood and Ray are using their platform, and Jewell’s story, to slay some dragons and make some very pointed statements against the news media and the investigative agencies who have been increasingly under attack in recent years.

The story of Richard Jewell is fascinating enough, and unique enough, to not need the political grandstanding, all too enticing for Eastwood and Ray to include.

Unfortunately, Richard Jewell can barely survive the level of muck that gets raked across it.

This ensemble, these performances, all good to excellent across-the-board, are more than able to convey the emotional arcs asked of them. And as Eastwood shows us, the suffocation that comes with celebrity, and how an entire nation can embrace and then destroy someone with a matching level of ferocity and fervor, serves as a precursor to the “cancel culture” we find ourselves living in.

But it’s the other stuff: The gross lies fabricated to push a false narrative. The disdain levied upon journalism. The mistrust of our intelligence organizations that clouds the film’s final act. Much like the persecution of an innocent Richard Jewell – the film’s histrionics all seem so unnecessary.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Nina Arianda, Ian Gomez.

Director: Clint Eastwood
Written by: Billy Ray
Based on the Vanity Fair article, “American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell” by Marie Brenner
Adapted from the book “The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle” by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen.
Release Date: December 13, 2019
Warner Bros.

The story of Richard Jewell is fascinating and long overdue for a cinematic re-telling.

The breakout lead performance from Paul Walter Hauser is something special.

Some will appreciate Richard Jewell existing within a commentary on how the media and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted and the ways those entities can chew people up and spit them out.

Others will find it exhausting that Richard Jewell exists within a commentary on how the media and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted and chew people up, spit them up, and are essentially an enemy to watch out for at all times.

The entire Olivia Wilde subplot is gross. Unnecessary and gross.

Works through its steps with a slow, elder precision which may cause some people to check their watch and anticipate a more urgent and compelling approach to the Richard Jewell story.