Richard Jewell

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell takes the story of the Centennial Park security guard falsely accused of setting off a bomb that killed and injured visitors to the Atlanta Olympic in 1996 and turns it into a blunt instrument to bludgeon the media and the FBI. The film -- which features a fine performance by Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell -- also takes swings are higher education-- a prime target for rabid red staters. Jewell comes across as a socially awkward underachiever with a juvenile zeal for law enforcement that is both admirable and naive. Olivia Wilde and Jon Hamm play an unscrupulous Atlanta newspaper reporter and an FBI agent, respectively, who sacrifice Jewell for personal ambition. The rendering of these characters is so atrocious, the dialogue so dull and unimaginative that they make viewing the film a real chore. Watching their interactions was like witnessing a mob hit. Jewell's relationship with his mother Barbara (a strangely off-kilter Kathy Bates) is cloying and with his lawyer (Sam Rockwell) is peculiarly uninvolving and underdeveloped. This picture has precious little of Eastwood's usual workmanlike competence. It feels incomplete, more of a notion than a picture, but it will be raw meat for MAGA heads everywhere and more the pity.