"Rent a cop," Richard Jewell, did his job well, perhaps too well for his own good. The hero of the 1996 Olympic park bombing, Jewell was at first lionized then slandered and vilified by what in this day and age has become the usual suspects, The FBI and media. Directed by Clint Eastwood, it is a somber but chilling telling of when respected goes rogue that is having the same disturbing effect today as the same apparatus sets its sights on someone higher than a security guard.
Eastwood's sometime lethargic direction remains controlled and unsensationalized throughout as his protagonist lummox (movingly played by Paul Walter Hauser) is picked at by easily corrupted FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) and a sleazy reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) willing to go the extra mile for a scoop. Impeding the runaway justice Jewell's lawyer Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) corrects the sloppy ambitions without grandstanding, tempering his rage at institutions in railroading mode while maintaining a balancing act dynamic of Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men with Jewell.
Outside of the moments from the bombing attack, Richard Jewell is mostly a drawing room drama filmed in banal, lugubrious settings with the occasional flock of abrasive reporters. The story commands attention however, especially in these "interesting times" where media has completely ignored its bedrock pledge to objectivity, shamelessly taking sides while rogue agents at the FBI are getting pink slips. Microcosm of today? Or just maybe the way it always has been and will be. Average film but a timely thought provoker.
Eastwood's sometime lethargic direction remains controlled and unsensationalized throughout as his protagonist lummox (movingly played by Paul Walter Hauser) is picked at by easily corrupted FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) and a sleazy reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) willing to go the extra mile for a scoop. Impeding the runaway justice Jewell's lawyer Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) corrects the sloppy ambitions without grandstanding, tempering his rage at institutions in railroading mode while maintaining a balancing act dynamic of Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men with Jewell.
Outside of the moments from the bombing attack, Richard Jewell is mostly a drawing room drama filmed in banal, lugubrious settings with the occasional flock of abrasive reporters. The story commands attention however, especially in these "interesting times" where media has completely ignored its bedrock pledge to objectivity, shamelessly taking sides while rogue agents at the FBI are getting pink slips. Microcosm of today? Or just maybe the way it always has been and will be. Average film but a timely thought provoker.