Richard Jewell (2019)

Clint Eastwood is good film maker. He knows how to film a story and make it impactful. He cast his film with a string of top talent who all bring their A game. He's working with a script from competent screen writer Billy Ray. And together with all of this they make the crap that turned out to be Richard Jewell the film.

Clearly this film is about making a point not making a compelling story. From the first scene we are introduced to Richard and the film hammers us with why he's a "good man" and everyone, especially the "elites" who see themselves as better than him, keep putting him down. But all he wants to do is shoot his guns and protect people. Everyone else is either another victim of the system or an elite asshole who has a clear agenda to put good people down.

Eastwood might as well have shot his film in black and white for all the nuance he imbues in his film. Put aside all the inaccuracies he purports to make his film drive it's point home, the even if the film had stuck to the facts it would have remained a simplistic boring tale. But it does beyond that. It's the hypocrisy. The film is all about a real person's character is ruined by others lying about them. Yet to do this the film lies about real people and their lives. I guess the film's point only applies to white men. This is a story designed to make us make us hate the press and the government and it doesn't matter how it plays fast and loose with the facts to make us hate.

This film is a good example of just how you can have all the right pieces together and still make a bad movie.

Richard Jewell
Starring: Paul Walter Hauser, Kathy Bates, Sam Rockwell, John Hamm, Olivia Wilde
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Billy Ray