Even Clint couldn't save this one
Warner Bros.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Naomi Watts in "J. Edgar."
It had a good cast with people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Judi Dench.
It was a biographical film about one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century. Plus, it was directed by Clint Eastwood.
Why “J. Edgar” proved so disappointing, I’m not certain. Perhaps Eastwood was nearing that chair-talking stage of his life.
Leonardo DiCaprio played FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the only man to hold the position from the bureau’s inception until Hoover’s death in 1972.
The film flashed back and forth from Hoover’s later days and various high points in his life.
He started in the Department of Justice in 1919, concerned about the infiltration of communists and Bolsheviks. Hoover took on more responsibilities than his title and training gave him.
He had a core of agents and was bent on creating a database of bad guys’ fingerprints. Hoover wanted everyone fingerprinted, to better find the perpetrator should a major crime take place.
Other agents were concerned they were investigating people who weren’t really suspected of a crime. Hoover was undeterred. He wanted to catch the bad guys before they committed a crime and personal rights weren’t a big deal to him.
He eventually squeezed his way into becoming the FBI director, working hard to gain power. Originally, agents had no arrest powers.
Throughout the years, we witness Hoover waiting in the outer office to meet the new president. Hoover always stopped to look at a painting of George Washington.
In each instance, the president had plans to bring Hoover down a peg or two, until Hoover quietly disclosed some information he had about the new chief executive or other family members. For instance, Hoover had info about Eleanor Roosevelt’s affair with another woman.
Hoover saw himself as a bigger man than others did. He encouraged comic books and graphic novels in which he arrested the bad guy with a machine gun. In reality, Hoover had nothing to do with arrests until it was publicly brought to his attention. Then he joined in on arrests only when it was safe.
Naomi Watts played his faithful secretary who immediately began shredding documents at his death.
She first met him when she started working for the Department of Justice back in 1919. After one date, Hoover was ready to propose, but she ended up as his secretary for decades instead.
Armie Hammer played the agent who ended up living with Hoover and certainly became his lover.
But the film has no life to it. The Hoover story just plods along through the Lindbergh baby kidnapping to John Dillinger’s killing. The story, the acting, needed to be turned up a notch or two.
We feel sorry for the little man who had a mother fixation his whole life. (She was played by Judi Dench.)
I would have liked to see more about what happened when John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King were assassinated.
We see this historic figure brought down to something resembling a vanilla milkshake.
The movie needed more cream.
J. EDGAR
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Dustin Lance Black
Rated R
137 minutes
2 stars out of 5
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