Eastwood Slows Down with Hoover Bio-Pic

Beneath those layers of makeup, Leonardo DiCaprio emerges as a seasoned J. Edgar Hoover.

Something as simple as a name can trigger certain keywords about a person. Pioneer. Powerful. Controversial. Those three words can describe a number of people, yet one man who innovated untouched crime scenes, fingerprint identification and wiretapping is a perfect fit to that mold. 

Director Clint Eastwood’s J.  Edgar follows the rise and fall of the career and highly debated personal life of J. Edgar Hoover, embodied by the phenomenal presence of Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio is unquestionably the strongest asset of the production, maneuvering between Hoover in his heyday and in his twilight with his one of his most remarkable performances to date.

Hoover is a complicated man and together Eastwood and DiCaprio develop a solid audience love-hate relationship. What ethical and unethical actions Hoover does to advance his power and transform the Bureau of Investigation into the FBI is quite intriguing despite listening to debates of political babble. But with all the politics and wiretapping, the other side, the personal side of Hoover likewise transforms his character. Eastwood sets up Hoover with three crucial figures in his life - his mother (Judi Dench), his secretary (Naomi Watts), and his right-hand man (Armie Hammer). Hoover’s sexual relationship with Clyde Tolson is not based on concrete evidence, yet Eastwood goes well beyond setting up Hammer as simply the top assistant.  The relationship even takes front stage in the latter half of the film, focusing less on politics amidst scenes of out-of-place déjà vu transitional scenes.         

The cliché framing for the bio-pic is unsettlingly frustrating as the elder Hoover’s reflection on his life resonates as a detachment from the overall success of the film rather than used as a tool in hopes of bridging two separate eras. The absence of time between the late 1930s and the early 60s is left unmarked and unquestioned and even audiences not familiar with Hoover’s back story won’t even have the sudden urge to ask what exactly happened. Many of the 60s segments seem to shoehorn many of the most impactful moments of that decade. It’s to the point where it’s almost cliché to add the Kennedy assassination and the Martin Luther King speech from the point of view of Hoover. Yet, the heyday of gangsters and the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in the 30s feel more authentic and crucial to the plot.     

Additionally, the make-up used for these scenes are both impressive and distracting, depending on the character. DiCaprio looks incredible as an aged J. Edgar Hoover, even though he comes off more as Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the character.  Completely the opposite is Armie Hammer, who was given a weak makeup job that fails at the illusion of a twenty-odd year old playing a seventy-year-old. What makes the scenes less believable is that Hammer moves around too nimble for someone his age rather than the geriatric work horse on its last leg. The consistent poor lighting doesn’t aid in creating a seamless canvas either. The lighting is simply distracting and as most scenes are indoors, a library, a federal building, it draws more than it can afford away from the moment.

After churning out an impressive series of award winners and nominees in the past decade, Eastwood regrettably spirals downward in the quality of his recent films. J. Edgar is by no means generalized as a weak film, but Eastwood’s precise direction seems burned out after a directorial marathon of Changeling, Gran Torino, Invictus, and Hereafter. However, even a less spectacular film from Eastwood consistently holds a more solid ground than any pretender stealing the legendary spotlight.

GRADE: B- (7/10)
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