J. Edgar (2011)

Though I haven't seen all the films of Clint Eastwood's directorial cannon, I've seen quite a few of them, and of those I've seen J. Edgar might be the least impressive. Now before if you had asked me what is the worst of Clint Eastwood's films as director I would have said Hereafter. There are a handful of really good moments in Hereafter, particularly the tsunami sequence, but as a whole I don't think that movie worked, however at least it was trying for something (in its case a more or less serious examination of psychic phenomena and near death experiences). J. Edgar on the other hand isn't trying for anything new, its trying to be the same kind of epic, life spanning bio-pic you've seen many times before.

Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as long time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is fine. In fact if he had made this film instead of the Aviator back in 2004 I would have really liked his performance, but here it doesn't feel like he's challenging himself. The movie works less as a movie then it does as a collection of scenes, which are generally fine by themselves, but don't add up to a satisfying whole. One of the reasons for this is that Mr. Hoover's career in criminal justice was so long, more then half a century, that its a story much better suited for a mini-series, or even a multi season television series, then it is for a movie. It just seems far too condensed and bunched up here, more of a highlights reel then a well developed story. Ironically American International Films did a similar life-spanning, name dropping, greatest hits bio-pic of Hoover in the late 1970's, only I liked that film more, despite committing many of the same "sins" as this movie because it was low-budget, knew it was ridiculous , and hence enjoyably bad. While J. Edgar half wants to be great, but I don't think it could be in large part because of its format. Some of the most intriguing moments in the film revolve around the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby and how Hoover exploited that to build up the FBI, if Eastwood had instead made a movie about the Lindberg kidnapping with Hoover as a character, I think it would have been a better film. **