Review: Richard Jewell
Produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, Richard Jewell, is based on the true story of, of course, Richard Jewell, the security guard initially hailed as a hero after finding a bomb that subsequently exploded at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics at Centennial Park before being targeted immediately after, treated as a suspect. The film is, for the most part, an earnest look how the gears of the media and the government can grind down an "everyman" like Jewell, played by Paul Walter Hauser. Hauser steals the show from a stacked ensemble cast that includes Sam Rockwell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, and Kathy Bates. Yet, in what stands as a supposed triumphant stance for the truth ends up being a maligned take on the facts, clearing one real-life person’s name and wrongfully vilifying another’s.
Taking the film at face value, Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray, manage to honestly portray Jewell as a flawed, yet endearing individual. Hauser, who’s notable for co-starring in another narrative retelling of a ‘90s media event, I, Tonya, exudes both a warmth and an underlying oddness as Jewell. You can see why this man wouldn’t be taken seriously; an overweight single white man living with his mother, he's obsessed with guns and wants nothing more than to be taken seriously as an authority figure. It’s surprising how funny the film is before the depiction of the 1996 Atlanta bombing, but Hauser has a natural comedic talent and every line reading is sincere, with the jokes never making fun of Jewell, but rather making light of the situations he finds himself in.
There’s legitimate concern when, in the film, Jewell abuses his position as a college campus security guard, harassing students, which comes after being kicked out of law enforcement years prior. Jewell didn’t plant the bomb in Centennial Park, obviously, but the film cleverly makes the audience doubt “but what if?” during a handful of moments. After the bombing, Jewell spouts out intricate bomb-making details over dinner, making his dear mother, Bobi (Kathy Bates), worry. There's that bit of doubt and just sympathy to see someone dig themselves into such a big hole. It’s a deep, affecting portrayal, especially when he has to come to terms with a reluctance to take a stand against the FBI agents who've invaded his life. The investigators, led by Agent Shaw (Jon Hamm), rummage through Jewell’s belongings and perform anxiety-inducing interrogation tactics, stopping at nothing to connect the bombing to Jewell.
Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), Jewell’s lawyer and friend, steps in to fight back against both the government trying to convict Jewell and the media pushing the story that Jewell is guilty. Bryant’s brashness and contempt for pretty much every authority figure clashes with Jewell’s naivety and willingness to roll over for anyone with a badge. Rockwell’s Rockwelliness lifts Hauser’s Jewell and makes him the abnormal hero at the center of this story. The heart, though, is Bates as Jewell’s mother, who carries weight of the situation on her shoulders, worry imprinted on her face. Her and her son's troubles all heads to a long, tearful plea at a press conference that’ll surely be her awards clip this season.
The result feels like an honest look at Richard Jewell, the man and the myth that grew around him once he was accused of killing two people and injuring 111 others at the Centennial Park bombing. But, to emphasize, this is Richard Jewell’s story, and that narrow focus turns out to be a detriment. The sequence where the bomb is found and later detonated is a tense one; Eastwood is clearly capable of constructing thrilling based-on-real-life action beats, the problem is he’s too preoccupied with the man at the center of the story to shift focus to any of the suffering beyond that. The film never names any of the true victims of the bombing and never spends any time with them, beyond the bombing sequence. Again, this is Jewell’s story, but the fact that it’s only his story ultimately makes the film tedious, cold-hearted and maliciously calculated. There were plenty of “white men who are wrongfully accused stories'’ that Eastwood could have told, real or not, but Eastwood went with one that uses real life victims of domestic terror as a prop for his anti-government (namely the FBI) and anti-media agenda. Which leads us to Olivia Wilde’s character.
The irony of Richard Jewell is in how it treats Wide’s Kathy Scruggs, who was the real reporter who wrote the story that ultimately upended Jewell’s life. Scruggs is made the villain, portrayed as a cartoonish, bloodthirsty reporter who, in so many words, seeks to bring down Jewell for being a “fat loner who lives with his mother.” The most vile turn is having Scruggs trade sex for a story, sleeping with Hamm’s Agent Shaw for information about the 1996 bombing. Scrugg’s colleagues have come out in her defense, arguing that the portrayal of the reporter, who passed away in 2001, is false. The fact that the film decided to invent a narrative that paints a real person as an unethical, unsympathetic catalyst for Jewell’s plight goes against its own rally cry against “fake news”. (Hamm’s FBI agent isn’t based on one real person, he’s an amalgamation of several people who worked on the case, which makes Scruggs depiction all the more pointed.)
The real Jewell passed away in 2007, and his legacy looks to be in good hands with Eastwood aptly presenting a touching story of a man caught in both the right and wrong place. It’s a zero sum game, though, with the film turning its sights to sully the memory of another real life part of the story. It feels simultaneously like a necessity in plotting to create a ‘bad guy’ and it also serves an eye-for-an-eye vendetta move. You can still count on Eastwood to making a thrilling, entertaining movie, but don’t count him out for pushing his own dangerous political agenda to sink that very movie in the process. Richard Jewell, for good and bad, is a look at how the media makes villains out of anyone, for the sake of a story.
