It's fascinating to me how much of what makes up our world is due to historical happenstance, the influence of a particular man (or woman) or set of circumstances that happened to be in a certain place at a certain time. So much of our society and its rules and institutions seems to have been fated or inevitable, when in fact it's the result of a determined person or lucky coincidence that happened to have the foresight or good fortune to rise to an occasion or exploit an opening. One of the individuals who had an outsized impact on American society, our worldview and our institutions over the past century was longtime (we're talking 40+ years) FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. In fact, I'd be prepared to make an argument that he's one of the 10 or so people MOST responsible for shaping what we, as a nation and society are today. So, needless to say, a flick about his life starring one of the best actors working today, in Leonardo DiCaprio by one of the most important directors working, in Clint Eastwood, becomes a must-see. This film has gotten mixed reviews.. most recognize its achievement while finding the narrative lacking. Most of all, I respect its ambition. I question whether another director could get a project like this green-lit. It's not quite a biopic, not quite a history of the FBI and not quite a historical drama a la say "The King's Speech". What it is, most of all, it seems to me, is a study of who Hoover WAS, why he was important, and what that means to us today. Through the lens of important events in his life and important events in the history of the FBI, we evaluate the rise and fall of an American icon and institution, a strange little man who built a monolith from scratch and whose legacy continues to resonate today. The film is framed as Hoover dictates a book to various FBI agents and outlines the start of his career, focusing on crucial points, like the Lindbergh baby case, the war on crime and the red scares of the early 1920s and the 1950s. The narrative skips from the past to the 1960's, where Hoover as an old man, has private files on every important person in the country and is, some say, the most powerful man in the nation. The narrative is extremely effective at points - doing a great job attempting to explain what made Hoover tick, for example, and fails at others - for instance, the story surrounding Hoover's illegal surveillance in the 1960's is less clear.
A flick like this is dependent entirely on the cast. It takes place in backrooms and offices and without actors capable of carrying the load, would completely collapse under its own weight. DiCaprio is great as J. Edgar. Simply great. He brings the perfect mix of eccentricity, paranoia, confidence and unease to a complicated, strange and yet powerful man. Judi Dench is great as well as Hoover's domineering mother, who had an undue influence on her son for the entirety of her life. Armie Hammer (who played the Winklevii in the Social Network..) is great as Hoover's #2 man, confidant, lifelong companion, probable lover and conscience, Clyde Tolson. Naomi Watts is more than adequate as Hoover's other lifelong companion, his personal secretary and keeper of his files, Helen Gandy. This flick is completely full of "those guys".. as basically every character is a man, and an Eastwood film attracts known actors. (For example - Jeffrey Donovan, the star of "Burn Notice", plays Robert Kennedy)
In showing, rather than telling and preaching, this film puts the right twist on Hoover's outsized legend. Everyone knows he was rumored to wear women's clothing, but this film doesn't focus on his strange personal habits, his modernization of law enforcement or his mistakes, focusing instead on what made the man tick, in an effort to understand what made the FBI what it is today. I appreciate that ambition.. and while that effort wasn't perfectly executed, the effort to document the meteoric rise and degeneration into paranoia of an icon is the sort of effort that just isn't made too often in Hollywood. For that, I applaud everyone involved, as Hoover's is a story that needs telling, particularly in our modern age of an omnipotent Federal government. This man is responsible for Federal Law Enforcement (FBI, DEA, ATF, you name it) as we know it, and his sweeping vision and ambition is responsible in large part for so many things.
Is the film perfect? No. But it is well-acted, often tragic and surprisingly touching in parts, and there's a lot more that works than there is that doesn't. So come for the acting, stay for the commentary on who we are and how we got here. If there's one outsized criticism from me, it's that the lighting in the film is HORRIBLE - it's not black and white, but every scene seems to take place at dusk/twilight, even when the scenes are in the middle of the day. It's rather distracting.
With that being said, this film does a lot more right than it does wrong - and the ambition alone is enough to add a point. 8/10.
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