Richard Jewell (2019)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Richard Jewell thinks quick, works fast, and saves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives after a domestic terrorist plants several pipe bombs and they explode during a concert, only to be falsely suspected of the crime by sloppy FBI work and sensational media coverage.
3 connections found
View:
3 films that influenced Richard Jewell
What critics say influenced Richard Jewell
The government gets off relatively easy compared to the fourth estate, the worst of which is distilled into the vampiric newspaperwoman Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), who nearly makes Jake Gyllenhaal’s monstrous antihero in Nightcrawler look tame.
I often thought of Bernie while watching this film, though they’re very different in practice and in telling.
Clint Eastwood continues his run of real-life stories of unsung American heroes – which he began with sleeper 2014 hit American Sniper and followed with Sully and The 15:17 to Paris – with the self-titled story of Richard Jewell.
But ever since he mistook that RNC chair for Obama, it’s been mostly downhill, with the helmer celebrating a psychotic killer in American Sniper, ludicrously attacking the supportive National Transportation Safety Board in the otherwise accomplished Sully, and now this.
“Richard Jewell” is the latest economically filmed, well-crafted gem from the remarkable and indefatigable 89-year-old Clint Eastwood, who in recent years has concentrated largely on stories of ordinary but unique Americans thrust into the spotlight by circumstances, e.g., “American Sniper,” “Sully” and “The 15:17 to Paris.”
It offers a prismatic, refreshingly ambivalent characterization of the kind of subject who doesn't usually get such an elevated treatment--treating this fat thirtysomething rent-a-cop with a bad moustache, ruddy skin, and questionable taste (ranging from violent arcade games to Kenny Rogers and The Anarchist Cookbook) with the same solemn curiosity Eastwood showed Chris Kyle in American Sniper .
Eastwood has employed such an approach in films about other unsung heroes, from “Sully” to “American Sniper.”
Through Shaw: who believes he’s destined for greatness too—and the FBI’s unscrupulous pursuit, Jewell resembles multiple Eastwood protagonists, like Maggie (Hilary Swank) in “Million Dollar Baby,” Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) in “American Sniper,” or Chesley Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) from “Sully.”