“RICHARD JEWELL”: Score one for the little guy

Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Paul Walter Hauser

Published December 12, 2019 by Robert W. Butler at Butler’s Cinema Scene

My rating: B (Opens wide on Dec. 13)

129 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Nearly 50 years ago the great New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wondered (in a review of Sam Peckilnpah’s “Straw Dogs,” I recall) whether fascist art was even possible.

Of course she hadn’t met late-stage Clint Eastwood.

Not that Eastwood is a fascist. But his right-leaning attitudes (in this case a big-time distrust of big government and the media, an attitude he shares with our President) are on full display in “Richard Jewell,” the fact-based story of a hero who overnight became a scapegoat.

Jewell, of course, was the security guard who at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta discovered an abandoned backpack containing several pipe bombs. He was instrumental in clearing civilians from the area; nevertheless, in the ensuing explosion two persons died and more than 100 were injured.

For a few days Jewell was a national hero; then the FBI decided he perfectly fit the profile of the hero bomber, a man (usually white, often a law enforcement wannabe) who sets up a crisis situation so that he can play the role of a hero in saving lives. And from that point on Richard Jewell’s life became a living hell.

Billy Ray’s screenplay introduces us to Richard  (a spectacular Paul Walter Hauser) in the months before the incident. He’s working in a government office pushing around a supply cart when he meets Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), a combative attorney chafing under civil service bureaucracy.

Watson is initially amused by Richard, an obese fellow who years earlier had been fired from his job as a deputy sheriff and has a desperate (and wildly unrealistic) desire to get back into law enforcement. Richard is a doofus, no doubt, but a sweet and polite doofus. The two start sharing lunches, at least until Richard gets a job as a security guard at a nearby college.

That doesn’t last, either. He gets into physical confrontations with the students; he pulls over speeders on a nearby highway even though he has absolutely no jurisdiction off campus. Good news, though…with the Olympic games coming to town there’s a big demand for security personnel.

Olivia Wilde

Which is how Richard comes to be in Centennial Park for the bombing.  Also on hand is an FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), indignant that he’s stuck on s such boring duty, and hotshot reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde)  of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  

Scruggs is the kind of glamorpuss journalist who basks in her physical beauty and killer instincts (in one scene she taunts less attractive and less talented women reporters in the newsroom). As soon as the bomb goes off she’s thinking journalism prizes, openly praying: “Let us find the perp before anyone else does…and let him the f**k be interesting.”

In the film’s most questionable toying with facts,  the movie Scruggs offers to trade sex with Hamm’s FBI guy for a scoop. The next day the AJC’s front page features her story naming Jewell as the agency’s prime suspect.

The film’s second half chronicles Richard’s persecution at the hands of the authorities. The apartment he shares with his distract momma. Bobi (Kathy Bates), is surrounded by reporters.  Initially unaware that he’s being set up for the fall, Richard eagerly participates in FBI interviews, even falling for a ruse that the authorities want him to star in a training video.

It’s not until his old pal Watson, now in private practice, gets involved that Richard realizes just how the completely noose of guilt has tightened.  The authorities invade his home, removing his impressive gun collection (Watson can only roll his eyes; why does every good ol’ boy have to keep an arsenal under the bid?) and even Bobi’s Tupperware, which might have been used to mix bomb chemicals. The old lady is reduced to tears.

When it becomes apparent that Richard could not have been in the park for the bombing and also at a pay phone from which the bomber called in a warning, the feds decide he must have had an accomplice.  And not just an accomplice, but a gay lover.

Throughout all this Watson is at wit’s end over his client’s behavior.  Jewell cannot help but get chatty with the cops; he still thinks he’s one of them, and his big mouth might just get him sent to Death Row. At moments “Richard Jewell” teeters on the brink of black comedy.

Richard Jewell was never charged in the bombing; years later the real culprit plead guilty after also setting off bombs at abortion clinics and a lesbian nightclub.

There’s a whole lot to like in “Richard Jewell.” Eastwood’s direction is impersonal but hugely effective; he rarely wastes a moment and is a master at building suspense.

The performances are fine, especially Hauser (he was one of the dopes who bashed Nancy Kerrigan’s knee in “I Tonya”). This is in many ways an impossible role — Richard is so clueless he verges on becoming a walking joke; still, Hauser finds a core of decency and honor here, and we end up rooting for the little guy (well, not physically) who triumphs over the big bad feds.

In recent days the film has become the focus of controversy; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has threatened to sue over the film’s depiction of Kathy Scruggs, particularly the notion that she traded sex for a story.  Scruggs died in 2001.

A couple of thoughts.  In more than 40 years in the news business I’ve never heard of a reporter prostituting herself for a scoop. Sounds like a screenwriter’s Hail Mary.

On the other hand, Hollywood so regularly lauds newspapers (“Spotlight,” “The Post”) that the profession should expect to take the occasional cinematic hit. We ink-stained wretches are perfectly capable of  getting it wrong, after all.

| Robert W. Butler

Read the original review and more reviews at Butler’s Cinema Scene