Richard Jewell stars Paul Walter Hauser in the title role, a security guard working during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, who discovers a pipe bomb that was planted at the venue. He manages to get many to safety before the bomb explodes and is initially hailed as a hero for his actions. However, he becomes the primary suspect in the FBI’s investigation, as they claim he fits the profile of a lone wolf. When Jewell becomes vilified by the media and under scrutiny from the FBI, he hires a lawyer named Watson Bryant, played by Sam Rockwell, to help him clear his name.
The film is directed by Clint Eastwood, who’s spent the last few years of his career directing true stories based on heroic figures, such as Sully and 15:17 to Paris (all of which to varying degrees of success). This continues Eastwood’s trend, and like many of his later features, it’s portrayed in this very larger-than-life fashion, showcasing the extreme scrutiny Jewell and his family faced in the aftermath of the bombing. And in that respect, this movie succeeds by not just strictly focusing on Jewell, but getting a little insight into some of the other key players in his life.
In fact, one can almost argue that Jewell himself isn’t necessarily the main character – something slightly hinted at, given Hauser’s name is last in the main cast. The film has a decent amount of focus as well on both Sam Rockwell as the lawyer and Kathy Bates as Jewell’s mother. Though besides Bates, many of the key players don’t really play a major role until about halfway through the film, and up until that point, it somewhat suffers a bit, due to its overall lack of excitement.
Much of the film’s first half is mainly filled with setup, and all the attention is mainly directed at Jewell himself. And while Paul Walter Hauser does a great job as Richard, especially once he becomes the FBI’s prime suspect, this character wasn’t exactly the nicest guy. He’s someone who respected law enforcement, though a bit too much. He works as a security guard at a school early on in the film, and often acts outside his jurisdiction, and would often harass students who he decides to investigate.
He’s someone who loved being an authoritarian figure, and had this film focused on much more of his life before the bombing, it would potentially cause loss of interest for just how unlikable he more or less was before the main events began. And the film suffers this moral conundrum as a result – while Jewell was in fact, innocent of the bombing, and the way in which the media painted a picture of him wasn’t right, he was someone who had some noticeably unlikable qualities before that, and audiences are asked to abandon any notions they had of him during the first act and see him in a whole different light.
It’s once these more likable figures get involved where the movie picks up speed and begins to show a much more interesting and compelling story. Sam Rockwell brings plenty of charisma to the role of Watson, getting to do what he does best, which is yell, scream, tell people off, and crack jokes while doing so. He’s wonderfully entertaining and his whole arc, going from being a struggling small-time lawyer to taking on such a huge case and finding success, is one of the highlights of the film.
Kathy Bates is also excellent as Jewell’s mother, with an often heartbreaking role as she’s barely able to contain her emotions as the media continues to go after her son. Her role is sometimes repetitive, as there are plenty of scenes in which she has to sit around, and cry out for her son, only leading to so much character development on her end. But given the fact that Bates gives such a committed performance makes the role a lot more compelling than it would have been with someone else in the role.
The one thing this film does exceptionally well is paint a great portrait of what lengths the media and certain authority figures will go to vilify certain individuals, and the effects it can have on one’s livelihood. Watson even repeatedly calls this out multiple times, as Jewell mindlessly cooperates with the FBI, who’s almost totally aware the FBI are asking him to confess a crime he didn’t commit to them While Jewell has almost this blind love of authority, Watson tells him how they don’t care about him the same way in which he cares about them.
The only downside to the way in which these antagonists are portrayed – namely the head FBI agent played by Jon Hamm and the main reporter who leaks the story, played by Olivia Wilde – is that they often come across as simplistic caricatures of villains, rarely with any nuance. Hamm has a very narrow view of the situation right from the get-go, while Wilde is often portrayed as someone who laughs and cackles her way through every scene, almost like a cartoon character. While both actors do a great job, and like with everyone else, make the characters more interesting to watch than they actually are, as actual characters they aren’t written to be that complex.
In fact, this film often handles many layered situations such as these with a sense of simplicity. Things are often painted with a black-and-white view of life and often explains things in the most clean-cut way possible – complete with one sequence of Jewell’s mother saying how he’s “one of the good guys” taking down the “bad guys.” Characters often jump from Point A to Point B based on one scene of them finding a certain piece of information, and their whole worldview changing, while certain plot points are summed up in a couple lines of dialogue.
It tries to present the story as if it’s this old-fashioned “good vs. evil” type of story. And this seems a bit contradictory, given how it seems self-aware at times of just how complex this sort of situation truly is. There are instances where it tries diving into how someone with such a blind love of law enforcement can turn them into almost a bully themselves. Yet, a few scenes later, these moments of nuance are undermined by turning these exact same characters into caricatures of morally righteous or cartoonish villains.
Richard Jewell is a bit of a mixed bag, though there’s maybe just enough good that allows it to outweigh the bad. It tells a great story that touches upon some very important themes, though it constantly shifts back and forth between what kind of approach it wants to take. Sometimes it portrays things in a very simplistic matter, and then there are other times it goes for something more nuanced. While it does take some time to get the ball truly rolling on the plot, once the likes of Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates get involved, it does become much more entertaining, since they have the more interesting characters. It’s a deeply flawed movie, and it’s understandable why some may not like it, though there’s just enough to make it worth watching, even if its flaws are noticeable.
Recommendation: Watch It
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