RICHARD JEWELL
Big Brother is Watching!
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
RICHARD JEWELL
by Adam Carroll Draper
Clint Eastwood has done it again, made a good movie and offended the sensibilities of some (SOME) on the left. Had it exposed the FBI and a sloppy American press at another time, it would have been widely hailed as a triumph. Having said that, the film itself is not political by any means other than inference. It is a well told story of a simple man’s life destroyed by those he trusted and idolized because they were too lazy not to jump to the first handy conclusion.
For those who don’t remember, Eric Rudolph planted a bomb in a backpack in Centennial Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. Richard Jewell, who was working security there, found the backpack and was helping clear the crowd out when the bomb went off. A couple people were killed, and lots of people were hurt. At first, Jewell was lionized in the media. Soon it was leaked that the FBI suspected that he planted the bomb to draw attention to himself. In the end, after Jewell’s life was turned in to a living hell and his reputation destroyed (on the flimsiest of evidence), Eric Rudolph admitted to having done it. The film walks through this rape of Jewell’s life by the FBI and the media in painful detail. It’s so well done. Clint Eastwood is at the height of all his powers. He doesn’t even throw in some of his usual cheese sauce in this one. It is effective, convincing filmmaking.
Paul Walter Hauser’s portrayal of Richard Jewell is… well, I am in awe of that. I would like to think I could pull it off, but he did it. (I know, what did he just say? I am a litigator. Of course, I think I can act.). Think about every dufus you have ever met and add to it that all he dreamed of was being a cop. That was Richard Jewell, only he was too jealous to even be campus police and ended up being a security guard. How many of those did you meet in college? (“No, dude, you are not going to pat down my date because you smelled pot on somebody ten minutes ago”). Hauser captured that. I have no idea what Richard Jewell was really like. The ponderous, not necessarily dim witted, person portrayed by Hauser is believably that cornpone security guy, but you can also accept that he is a protector, performing a crucial (yet ridiculed) job.
Jewell’s mom is played by Kathy Bates. What can you say? My friend, Ron Short, calls her our Dame Judy Dench. She does not offer her labored interpretation of Bobi Jewell, dazzling us with her own creativity. No, she uses her immense talent to immerse the audience in the story. This is a story is told by a master. Kathy Bates makes us love Bobi Jewell, the lady who works insurance claims and loves her son. As much as her son loves the FBI and longs to be an agent, Bobi Jewell adores Tom Brokaw and trusts the news media. Her eye-opening disillusionment hurts, and we feel it. There was no way on God’s green earth that her son planted a bomb that killed and maimed. No way. In the end, she makes an agonized plea to the American people and President Clinton to either come up with some actual proof that Richard did it or clear his name. Kathy Bates’ performance in that scene is the stuff of legend, and she makes it seem like she just rolled out of bed and decided to be Bobi Jewell.
The movie is well acted. It’s shot well. I might have simply called it a good movie. It’s just that I haven’t seen one in a while and it surprised me.
I can’t just let it go that some on the left do not like the movie. The gist of their gripe is that Clint should not have made it now because tends to lend credence to President Trump’s attacks on the media and the FBI. Here’s one such review:
So, let me get this straight, as long as a film does not send a message that encourages people to draw an impermissible political inference, it can be acknowledged as a good movie? Doesn’t that sound like Goebbels?
Since that rabbit hole has been opened, what are we supposed to think of an FBI that destroys someone’s life and reputation on the “thinnest of suspicions”? We should all be threatened by that for the same reason that Richard Jewell’s attorney, Watson Bryant (played by Sam Rockwell) had a sign on his wall that said, “I fear my government more than terrorism.”
How is this blatant fact so prescient that the left (who deign to hold the fear of an intrusive police state in the marrow of their being) cannot stand for it to be even implied in a movie? Hmmm?
Did you see the FISA Court’s rebuke this week of the FBI over the fact (long denied or dismissed as irrelevant in the media) that they lied and misled the court into issuing the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign? Yes? No?
Well, here it is:
https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc%2019%2002%20191217.pdf
It is only a little over three pages (most of which is footnotes). It is so bad that the court is calling ALL FISA warrants into question. You realize that this could happen to anyone.
How is this not terrifying to every American? We should have all been up in arms that the FISA Court was created in the first place. This fact cuts both ways, both parties! It was not the left that packed our courts with judges who think that there is a special disclaimer that allows the government to ignore the Bill of Rights in order to stop bad guys. The whole government apparatus created to fight the war on terror, the war on drugs… all of it (and all the apparatus’ apparatchiki) are an affront to liberty. This has been a mantra of the left, and I have always agreed with them. Now… silence. Crickets! Why? Because the apparatus they hate is being used to stop Trump. Wow! Really? That is why some on the left hate this movie. It makes stark their present hypocrisy without even saying it. That is art in its most fundamental form.
I am reminded of the fact that by 1936, when Hitler was re-elected as Chancellor, there was no way to determine a person’s party by the position he or she had on a particular issue because the parties had flipped so often and suddenly taken what they had vehemently opposed – purely for politics. Before you think I am calling someone in particular a Nazi, remember that Nazi means National Socialist.
Do we have a position from which we can defy totalitarianism? Can we agree that the FBI should not be able to spy on a presidential candidate “on the thinnest of suspicions”? No! In fact, we cannot even make a movie about the FBI and the media arbitrarily destroying someone’s life for fear that it might cause Americans to draw an impermissible inference.
If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment and/or share it. It helps. I sincerely appreciate the fact that you read it.