Clint Eastwood has brought us many films as a director and over the past few years he has become a force when it comes to award season with films such as Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, and Invictus. With Eastwoods latest film, J. Edgar, he sticks to his recent trend of biographical flicks. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the title character J. Edgar Hoover. The film also co-stars Armie Hammer, most notably known for playing the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, and Naomi Watts(Mulholland Dr, King Kong).
The film takes you through the efforts of J Edgar Hoover to create the FBI, really bring law enforcement to the country as a whole. Back in the 1920s and 30s we were a lawless country and Hoover was determined to bring law and bring capable officers in to uphold that law. Hoover wanted officers of the law to maintain an excercise regimine, he wanted officers to not allow any toxins such as drugs or alcohol into their bodies, he also wanted them to look presentable starting with facial hair. He received a lot of ridicule as being a man that didn’t partake in the action, he never made any arrests personally, and was made out as a man that was all talk. Outside of his public image Hoover had things going on that would have affected his image entirely. Many claimed Hoover was a closet homo-sexual and throughout this film you get the perception that Hoover and his assistant, Clyde Tolson played by Hammer, had a little bit more going on than what they led on. While the film never came out and told you that there was something going on behind closed doors it definitely did everything it could to lead you to believe that there was. Hoover was also tending to an ailing mother, played by the great Judi Dench. His mother was everything to him, she took care of him, and he never seemed to leave the nest persay. Naomi Watts portrays Hoover’s secretary, Helen Gandy, who when it came to business matters took care of everything for Hoover.
Eastwood is a director that usually delivers in the story side of film, granted Eastwood did not write the script for this film, he didn’t do much to help what was a lacking script. The film just never seemed to know what it’s purpose was or what story it was trying to tell. Another problem I had with it was the atrocious make-up work. I don’t know what Eastwood was trying to do with the make-up but he doesn’t need to do it again. The film as a whole just seemed really empty and it never pulled me into the film. Sure some things happened that helped to keep me interested in the film enough to sit through it’s well over 2 hour runtime but it just seemed to be lacking something to push it up into the upper echelon of films where Eastwoods films are usually at.
Sure the film was empty and lacking in the story front but this is a film that we all know is out there for Mr. DiCaprio to potentially get that Oscar nomination that has long passed him by. Will this performance give him that nod that has long since eluded him? That remains to be seen. We are coming into my favorite time of the year for movies with the big Oscar push and I’m sure there will be some performances that will overshadow Leo. Was his performance good? Yes, I would even go as far to say it was great. DiCaprio has come a long way in recent years in my opinion putting a lot into his roles and delivering on the screen and I think there is a very good chance he will get that nomination that he wants so badly and I won’t have a problem with that at all. The big story here though is the performance Armie Hammer gave in a supporting role. You want to talk Oscar worthy performances take a look at his performance. DiCaprio was great but he would have been nothing without Hammer, he took the seemingly emotionally challenging role of Tolson and perfected it. There have been some great performances in a supporting role in recent years and Hammer continues that trend and I will be highly disappointed if he doesn’t get an Oscar nod for his performance, it was that good. Naomi Watts has always been one of the better actresses and one of my favorites. She doesn’t do anything special but I think a lot of it was the role. I felt she was under utilized, she’s too good of an actress to be used the way she was.
At the most I would call this a good film. There was nothing special about it in the least. It was lacking in many areas which is really hard for me to grasp considering what Eastwood has brought us over the past few years. But if you are into watching great, award worthy performances and want to be able to grade these roles yourself so you can be more knowledgeable when it comes to award season then most definitely check out this film. DiCaprio has a strong case for the long eluded Oscar nomination he wants and Armie Hammer delivers a performance that should definitely award him a nomination at the very least. We can all hope that Clint Eastwood can return to some of the glory he has experienced over the past few years with his next film, this one just didn’t do it for me.