Richard Jewell (2019)

When I first started to see previews for the new movie 'Richard Jewell' I was excited, curious of course to know more about one the most famously wrongly accused people of my life time, but mainly because I have been a fan of director Clint Eastwood's late in life cycle of making films based on true stories of recent decades ('Sully', 'The Mule'). The backlash over the films portal of Kathy Scruggs an Atlanta newspaper reporter who played a prominent role in the veritable witch hunt that Mr. Jewell was subjected to, dampened my enthusiasm some. Ms. Scruggs is dead and therefore not in a position to defend her self and Olivia Wilde plays her as a pretty miserable excuse for a human being, this may well be unfair to her. However that aside I thought 'Richard Jewell' was a pretty solid movie.

For those who may be unfamiliar or who have forgotten Jewell was a security guard at the Centennial Park venue at the 1996 Summer Olympic games in Atlanta Georgia. It was Jewell who first pegged an abandoned backpack as a "suspicious package" and alerted authorities. Ultimately the backpack proved to contain three pipe bombs, and Richard's discovery of this likely saved many lives (ultimately over 100 people were injured and one to two killed, depending on the source). Hailed initially as a hero Jewell quickly became the prime suspect, the FBI was looking at him as a likely 'hero bomber' someone who plants a bomb in order to stop it and thus become a hero (there is precedent for this, apparently something similar happened at the L.A. games in 84'). Scruggs broke that story, and the film implies got said dirt in exchange for sexual favors with an FBI agent. Jewell's life was needlessly turned upside down and the real bomber Eric Rudolph wouldn't be apprehended until 2003.

In some ways this story is really the stuff of "The TV movie" though that genera as brought to us by the "the networks" has largely gone away since 1996 when this movie is set. By giving Jewell's tale a big screen treatment, with high production values and solid actors, Eastwood has given the man the redemption tale he deserved (sadly Jewell passed away in 2007 at the age of 44). Jewell was a Baptist and a gun loving, portly white southern man, and he is now the hero of a major motion picture, that just doesn't happen, and that is why this is so great, this is a story we don't often get and well told to boot. Paul Walter Hauser is fantastic as Jewell, he becomes the man and radiates an odd endearing charisma playing someone who seemed to be very awkward. Kathy Bates gets a sold part as Jewell's devoted mother, with whom he was living at the time of the bombing. Jon Hamm plays FBI agent Tom Shaw, who I think may be a composite, his square jaw casting is almost too obvious, but works none the less. Sam Rockwell gave my favorite performance of the piece as Watson Bryant, Jewell's friend and lawyer whose trust in his client is heartening, and whose efforts in his service inspiring.

Though one could read the film, especially in light of the current political climate as an us vs. them story of the media vs. downtrodden white America, I would recommend taking it as what at its heart it appears to be, a redemption story. Richard Jewell was a hero,  a man who wanted to be one and for whom unlike most of us, time, circumstance, and talent combined to allow him to be. He went through hell for doing the right thing, yet in the end you know he'd do it again in a heartbeat. It's a story the bears telling. ***1/2