'Richard Jewell' - The Movie

I finally got to see Richard Jewell, having rented it from my local library (which is now open after a long COVID lockdown), and I was astonished.  I figured I'd like it, but I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did.

Director Clint Eastwood did a masterful job in his depiction of Richard Jewell himself, capturing the character of the man brilliantly.  Jewell is presented as a modest, respectful man who seeks no attention and seeks only to do his job the best that he can.  The movie opens with him in 1986, working as a mailroom clerk in a public law firm getting Snickers candy bars for lawyer Watson Bryant (the man who would defend Jewell against accusations of planting the bomb to "discover" it and be a hero)  without being asked to and developing a special rapport with Bryant early on.  As the film progresses, Jewell strives to excel in a budding law enforcement career and gets in trouble for being "overzealous" in his work as a security officer, eventually getting the temporary job that would change his life forever.  Eastwood's depiction of the night that Eric Rudolph planted the bomb at Centennial Olympic Park is filled with dramatic tension  that shows Jewell at his finest hour - moving around like a madman trying to get everyone to safety.

The turn of events that makes Jewell's life a living hell illustrates how his best qualities - politeness, deference to authority - almost prove to be his undoing, as he is all too happy to cooperate with the FBI to the point where Bryant has to save Jewell from itself.  Jewell grows to be less trusting of his tormentors in the government (and the media) as they harass him and his mother, but the never loses his idealism and in the belief in law and order.  Richard Jewell does nothing short of getting to the heart of a decent, selfless individual.  

There are many things to love about Richard Jewell.  Eastwood  and screenwriter Billy Ray bring out Jewell's character in subtle ways, such as giving bottle of water to a pregnant woman at the park, or joining his mom at a Kenny Rogers concert there.  Also of note are how Jewell and Bryant respond to each other with mutual respect throughout the ordeal and the ambivalence Jewell shows toward the media when they, at first, hail him as a hero.  In recreating the events that led up the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996 (twenty-five years ago yesterday), Eastwood brings the viewer back to 1996 with his accurate portrayal of the times, with a documentary-like feel.  He even uses archival footage of the Olympic opening ceremony, showing the moment Janet Evans passed the torch to Muhammad Ali, and - nice touch - alternating track star Michael Johnson's record-setting 200m victory with a time of 19.32 seconds with Bryant and his Russian-born legal assistant timing the walking distance between the public phone where the bomber called 911 to report the bomb in the park and the park itself.

Richard Jewell isn't perfect, though.  I have to address the elephant in the room here, Eastwood's and Ray's depiction of the late Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (she died in 2001) as an ethically dubious newswoman willing to trade sex for inside information from an FBI agent.  ( Let me be clear: There is no evidence that Scruggs ever did such a thing, and Eastwood's misogynistic swipe at her was wrong.  Apart from the depiction of Bryant as Jewell's only lawyer, it's the only historical inaccuracy in the entire movie.  To be fair, though, Eastwood does not include a sex scene, and Scruggs comes to see the error of her reporting.  (How does that happen?  See the movie.)  

The real villain, though, is FBI agent Tom Shaw, a composite of the actual FBI agents who investigated Jewell. Shaw represents an FBI as overzealous in its duties as Jewell was made out to be, violating Jewell's privacy (a long-common practice of the FBI, as Jewell's fellow Georgian Martin Luther King, Jr., would have pointed out) and doubting his innocence despite the lack of hard evidence against him.  Eastwood pulls no punches toward the media, showing a sensationalizing press corps hounding Jewell as he tries to deal with the investigation into his alleged role in the bombing.  But the indiscretions of the media pale in comparison to those of the FBI - still operating in 1996 as if J. Edgar Hoover were still in charge.

The performances are all first rate, from Kathy Bates as Jewell's suffering mother and Sam Rockwell as Watson Bryant to Jon Hamm's nefarious portrayal of Shaw and Olivia Wilde as Scruggs.  But the big surprise is Paul Walter Hauser in the title role.  He just didn't play Richard Jewell; he became Richard Jewell in an incredibly stellar performance that brings out Jewell's humanity.

Despite the flaws of the film in its depiction of Kathy Scruggs, Richard Jewell is a solid piece of filmmaking that settles once and for all the decency and the heroism of a man who should never have been demonized or caricatured the way he was.  It is required viewing for anyone who believes in truth and fairness.  The movie also gets the recommendation of Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey, who won the 100m race in Atlanta the same day Rudolph's bomb went off.  And few sports-related movies come with a recommendation as strong as that.