Sad as it is to report, his latest, the star-studded J. Edgar, lands with a hollow thud in the sorry latter category. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover, the legendary FBI first director, the film falls prey to almost every damning pitfall of the biopic genre. Meandering, underbaked, and almost entirely devoid of depth or emotion, Eastwood’s movie plays less like a cinematic narrative than an exhausting series of historical “greatest hits” moments stretched over a punishing 135 mins. I’ll be utterly gobsmacked if there’s a more tedious prestige picture this year.
Unspooling in pointlessly jumbled chronology, J. Edgar loosely traces its subject from his earliest days as an eager young agent in the 20s, feverishly trying to pin down convoluted Bolshevik conspiracies, to his lonely final days five decades later, sternly recounting his autobiography to a series of interchangeable typists. The film skips over the oft-covered gangster wars of the Depression, instead primarily using the Lindbergh kidnapping as a means of recounting Hoover’s obsessive personal quest to improve methods of evidence retrieval and to establish a fingerprint database. His visionary ideas transform the Bureau of Investigation from a dead-end organization into the top crime-fighting agency in the world, in the process elevating J. Edgar to an untouchable status enjoyed by precious few.
Although the details of Hoover’s personal life are sketchy at best, Eastwood’s film paints him as a socially inept loner, clinging to the apron strings of his dominating mother Anna Marie (Judi Dench) for much of his life. He has only two other confidents: loyal secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and second-in-command Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). Tolson, the movie argues, was also Hoover’s clandestine lover, a man of infinite patience who spent an inordinate amount of social time with his high maintenance superior.


The character of Hoover could have been explored more satisfyingly if the picture hadn’t short-changed the key players surrounding him. Armie Hammer has a genuinely strong presence, but his Clyde Tolson is an utter blank. It’s nearly impossible to name any characteristics that describe his personality beyond “loyal.” Like Naomi Watts’ underutilized secretary, he’s just there for DiCaprio to bounce lines off of – a limited function which proves disastrous in the love story-heavy second half. On the flip side of the equation, Judi Dench brings lioness-like severity to her role as Mama Hoover, and owns the film’s single best scene, bitterly recalling one of J. Edgar’s homosexual childhood classmates. However, despite her alleged impact of her son’s life, she receives depressingly little screen time.
Eastwood may not be able to breathe any storytelling life into J. Edgar, but he’s certainly fashioned a beautiful looking dud. He and his frequent cinematographer Tom Stern return to the chilly deep black and silver colour palette of Flags of Their Fathers, elegantly complementing the period costumes and sets, and imbuing the movie with a handsome noirish atmosphere. It’s fitting that Hoover, a man of a thousand secrets, always seems to have his face partially concealed by shadows.
At one point, J. Edgar says “What’s important at this time is to re-clarify the difference between hero and villain.” It’s a powerful statement, and one that should be loaded with rich subtextual meaning. There are intriguing parallels between Hoover’s tale and our own turbulent times and one can’t help but wish a bolder, riskier filmmaker than Eastwood had been able to sink their teeth into this story. Maybe then we’d leave the theatre deep in conversation instead of stifling yawns of indifference.
*Originally published at Converge Magazine.