Clint Eastwood

Richard Jewell

First Hit: Outstanding film and portrayal of a man who went through hell because of the FBI and the malfeasance of a newspaper reporter.

I so bought into Richard Jewell’s character as portrayed by Paul Walter Hauser. He was terrific and gave me a real sense of a man who really tried hard to follow the rule of law and be someone people could count on to protect them.

This is based on a true story about Richard Jewell, who was pretty much a loner, lived with his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates), and wanted to be part of the law enforcement community all his life.

When we first engage with Jewell, he’s a supply clerk in a company and we see that he is thoughtful and careful about his work. We are shown this as he overhears a loud, aggressive telephone conversation by Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) and a client of the company they work for.

Apologizing for overhearing the conversation (there’s no way he couldn’t hear), he tells Watson to look in a drawer because Jewell has filled it with the pens Watson uses in his work. Also, asking Bryant to open another drawer, it is filled with Snickers candy bars, the snack food Bryant eats when stressed.

Through this interchange, they become acquaintances and chat from time to time. One day Jewell gets a job offer to be a security guard at a local college campus. Jewell’s goodbye to Bryant is very sweet. Bryant, caught off guard, gives him a $100 bill in case he might need anything during the transition between jobs. Jewell is touched, and for him, their friendship is now rock-solid.

At his new job, he has a run-in with some students who are breaking campus rules and he gets fired for this and because he’s overstepping his bounds by stopping cars on the highway near the campus looking for drugs.

These things highlight a couple of things about Jewell. He believes in following the rules, and he can and will step outside the bounds of his authority.

Jewell finally gets a security guard job at AT&T’s events at Centennial Park which are part of the celebrations for the 1996 Atlanta, GA Olympics. His thoughtfulness and kindness are highlighted here, as well. He provides water or Coca Cola to pregnant women so that they do not become dehydrated, and he also supplies the lighting and filming crew in the nearby tower with food or other things they need. He wants to be helpful.

He’s also looking for suspicious items and people. When he discovers a backpack that has been left under a bench where he was sitting, he tells the police. The police team brings in some experts and they realize it is a bomb. While moving the crowd back, the bomb explodes, and two people are killed, and many others are injured.

At first, he’s seen as a hero and is on television. He’s proud of his work, and his mother is especially pleased because her favorite newscaster, Tom Brokaw, spoke glowingly about her son.

FBI Agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) was also stationed at the park and is disappointed that he was stationed there, and even worse, something happened on his watch, and he didn’t prevent it. After interviewing Jewell’s past records and after meeting with the college who fired Jewell, Richard becomes a suspect. What does Jewell do when he realizes the FBI is considering him a suspect? He calls Bryant.

Local newspaper columnist Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), who only wants to make a name for herself, uses her sexuality towards Shaw to extract this FBI probe about Jewell. She writes an unconfirmed expose front-page article in the newspaper, and in a New York minute, it jumps up to become national headlines.

Now Jewell is seen as the vilified criminal, not the hero, all in a span of about a week.

The film then tells the story of how his friendship with Bryant and the undying support of his mom, and longtime friend Brandon Walker (Mike Pniewski) help him through the onslaught of the rush-to-judgment people – the FBI and Media.

I did find it interesting that this film has come out when both the FBI and the Media are under a public spotlight and scrutiny.

Hauser needs to receive an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jewell. He was terrific in bringing this confused, caring man to life. His sincerity, thoughtfulness, and helpfulness (even at the wrong times) are excellently portrayed. Rockwell gives yet another robust and stunning performance as Jewell’s friend and attorney. His sarcasm and pointed jabs at the FBI’s flawed work were excellent. Hamm was good, but it would be nice to see him in a role where drinking and sex are not his only motivation. Wilde was all over the place and enjoyable as Scruggs, who clearly had only one thing on her mind, fame. Bates was terrific as Jewell’s mother. Her demonstration of faith in her son and that he wasn’t who people were making him out to be, was sublime. Nina Arlanda, as Watson Bryant’s office manager and friend, Nadya Light, brought a beautiful blend of humor and persistence to Bryant’s actions. Billy Ray wrote an outstanding screenplay that was crisp and painted each character entirely. Clint Eastwood did an excellent job of directing this story. He is usually efficient in telling stories and here he stepped it up a notch.

Overall: This was a wonderfully entertaining film and brought to life a story I read about some twenty-three years ago.

The Mule

First Hit: Film lagged and spent too much time on an aging Clint Eastwood.

I was looking forward to seeing this film, but as it wound down, I realized that I simply was watching an old man be an old man making choices.

I like Eastwood and here as Earl Stone who is a horticulturist that’s running his own business, he’s good. However, as we begin to explore his life, we discover he was once married, didn’t show up to his daughter’s wedding, likes to be the life of the party, and he slowly becomes afraid of the internet because he knows it going to ruin his business.

As his flower business fails, he needs money, so he turns to driving drugs for a dealer. At first, it’s small quantities, which he does easily. Then he starts moving larger and larger amounts of cocaine.

Eventually, the head of the cartel becomes impressed with this old guy who seems to be able to easily move drugs around the country. After meeting the head, he moves the largest shipment ever moved to a mid-west city.

In the meantime, he’s being looked for by the DEA who need a bust to prove their worth. Leading the team of men is an outsider DEA Agent named Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) and a local DEA Agent (Michael Pena).

However, the story seems to be focused on Earl, when we’ve got Pena, Cooper, and Laurence Fishburne (as a DEA Special Agent) who are great actors that have stories to tell the audience as well.

Additionally, the audience gets cheated on a background of Earl’s family with former wife Mary (Dianne Wiest), daughter Iris (Alison Eastwood), and granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga). It could have been compelling to share more about this. Why hire great actors if they only have small, almost meaningless roles?

To me this was the downfall of the film. We spent a lot of time with Earl driving down the highway when backstories of all these characters could have been brought forth for our enjoyment.

Eastwood was good, but he seems to either lack the fortitude to take on strong roles or he wanted it to be this fumblingly self-focused old man trying to make a living and be seen by others as king of the hill. Farmiga was strong as the granddaughter who believed in him. Wiest was great, but there was so little of her. Alison Eastwood was OK as Earl’s daughter. Cooper was OK in a limited but pivotal role. I think he needed to become more of the story. Pena was, as always, an excellent sidekick. Fishburne was strong as the leading Special Agent. Andy Garcia was excellent as the drug lord. Nick Schenk wrote this film from an New York Times article. Eastwood directed himself in this film and it appears he’s lost his touch.

Overall: This was a disappointing film, lacking in suspense as well as developing scenes.

The 15:17 to Paris

First Hit:  Absolutely dull and uninspiring until the very end.

This film intersperses quick flashes of the dramatic event of these three men thwarting a terrorist attack on a train to keep you in your seat. If they didn’t most people would walk out of this uninspired effort by Clint Eastwood.

My first turn-off was when a grade school teacher for two of the featured young men stated to the mothers, "your children have ADD and they need drugs." The retort as Spencer and Alek's mothers storm out of the meeting was “my God is bigger than your statistics.” Are you kidding me? This is how Eastwood ends a dramatic scene?

One of Eastwood’s biggest mistakes is having the actual hero’s play themselves in this film. They had actors portraying them as young boys (ages 11 – 14), but as adults the stilted acting, insipid dialogue, and poorly created scenes made this film drag on and on and on.

We experience Alek Skarlatos (played by himself and Bryce Gheisar), Anthony Sadler (himself and Paul-Mikel Williams), and Spencer Stone (himself and William Jennings) when they met at a grade school, how their initial friendship developed in Sacramento, and vaguely how it lasted through the years till we see them together again traveling through Europe.

The early years are OK in that there are scenes that give the audience cause to believe these boys supported each other because they were all misfits in some way. I was saddened to see how their playing together was focused on gun play, with realistic paint (and one real) guns that looked like an AK and a M-16.

There is a bent in this film about God and Christian religion although we don’t see them in church. The extent of their faith seems to be praying for something to happen or for things to be different.

Finally, they go to Europe but there is only some background on Spencer because we follow him failing through several military job trainings. However, these failings were a precursor to him actually learning stuff along the way; then using this knowledge to make a difference later on. There was virtually no history about Anthony as to what he was doing prior to going to Europe with Spencer. And there wasn’t much about Alek who was fighting in Iraq and mistakenly left his back-pack at a village. What was this about?

Arriving in Europe Spencer and Anthony, awkwardly travel from place to place. At one point they meet a young asian woman, they go a couple places together but a couple scenes later she's gone. What was this about? They finally get to Germany and meet up with Alek who was staying with a German exchange student.

Getting on the 15:17 train to Paris, they disarm a terrorist and save the life of a man shot by the terrorist. Then they get honored by the French government and all is right with their lives. This is the crux of the film.

Because Eastwood used the real men to portray an actual event, their lack of acting abilities and the way Eastwood works was a mistake. The men cannot project into the camera thereby making it feel real to the audience. Adding to this mistake was Eastwood’s penchant to only do one or two takes, and with real actors they can deliver something good, non-actors generally cannot. The film comes off as amateurish.

The storyline was haphazard, felt thrown together, and despite being Christian based, had little meat on the bones.

The best acting job in this film was Paul-Mikel Williams as young Anthony. Judy Greer as Spencer’s mom Joyce was OK. The acting by the real men was obviously poor which took away from their own heroic story. Kudos for their actions against the terrorist but I’m not sure this story was film material as it was presented. Dorothy Blyskal wrote a horrible screenplay and Director Eastwood failed in all cases to deliver something interesting until the very end when the terrorist tried to take over the train car.

Overall:  This film will more than likely be the worst film I see this year, if not it will be close and it’s only February.

Sully

First Hit:  An amazing, crisp, and well-acted film about a remarkable event showing how this pilot made an extraordinary set of decisions under extreme pressure.

I was profoundly affected by how much Tom Hanks (as U.S. Airways pilot Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger) embodied the deeply rooted sense of responsibility for the 155 people on the plane he had to land in the Hudson River.

Like Sully, I was fully engrossed in wondering about everyone on the plane. The concern is demonstrated in so many ways:  1) Sully going up and down the aisle ensuring everyone is out of the plane. His last look towards the back of the plane before he exited was telling.  2) When he asked one of the officers of the pilot’s union to help him find out if everyone got off the plane.  3) the release of the subtle out-breath while being given a physical when he’s told, the survivor's count was 155.

We get multiple views of the event. We get a glimpse of what the air traffic controller went through, his heart being in the job. We get to see how the airline's insurance company and investigators aimed to have the water landing be pilot error. We see the closeness and distance Sully has with his wife Lorraine (Laura Linney).

We get to embrace the pilot and co-pilot (Aaron Eckhart as Jeff Skiles) relationship and how this event brought them closer together. Lastly, we the audience, see a public hearing about the event. All of this in a crisp well executed 96 minutes.

The dream sequences were powerful and were reminders of how a commercial airline plane can create enormous damage to a city. The film editing of the differing views of this event, was perfect. The conclusion, even though it is already public knowledge, is wonderfully suspenseful and gratifying.

Hanks is superb. He embodies the weight of the role of pilot and all the decisions Sully has made over the years. I would want all my pilots to be this man. Linney is good as Sully’s wife. While we never see them together, and her relationship with Sully during this film is solely by phone, it works, she’s able to bridge the gap. Eckhart is wonderful and strong as co-pilot Skiles. He was perfect. Todd Komarnicki wrote an very strong engaging script. Clint Eastwood’s direction was sublime. He captured so many aspects of the event and did this in a clear concise manner.

Overall:  This is a wonderfully executed film depicting a set of life saving decisions made clearly and with concise conviction.

American Sniper

First Hit:  An extremely well-crafted film.

Killing in war is sometimes justified by the beliefs of a country and its people.

Settling into this film, one has to set aside any beliefs (especially political) about right or wrong because this film is about how one man processes killing other humans when he believes what he is doing is right and is doing it for his country.

This story is about Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) an SEAL sniper who did 4 tours in the middle-east and is credited with over 160 kills. He became "The Legend". Kyle is married to Taya (Sienna Miller) and in-between the first 3 tours she becomes pregnant with a son and daughter, whom Chris loves dearly. Kyle is very controlled and is tightly wound. Around home he is quiet and distant. With the guys in Iraq he’s fearless and engaged.

The pacing of the scenes along with the setups were very strong. The decision making of whether to take a shot we’re well measured and reflected in the actor, screenplay and director. Visually it was a very strong and the edits only added to the action as it transpired.

Cooper was extraordinary in all ways. His controlled looks and measured actions were reflective of someone who had a lot of built up stresses. Miller was very good in her portrayal of a loving wife who wanted her husband back. Jason Hall wrote a wonderful screenplay. Clint Eastwood showed why he is a very strong, precise, and effective director in bringing this story to life.

Overall:  It is an excellent film.

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