J. Edgar

J. Edgar
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Produced by
Written by Dustin Lance Black
Starring
Music by Clint Eastwood
Cinematography Tom Stern
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date
  • November 3, 2011 (2011-11-03) (AFI Film Festival)
  • November 9, 2011 (2011-11-09) (United States)
Running time
 140 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $35 million[2]
Box office $84.9 million[3]

J. Edgar is a 2011 American biographical drama film directed, produced and scored by Clint Eastwood.[4] Written by Dustin Lance Black, the film focuses on the career of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from the Palmer Raids onward. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, and Judi Dench. It is also the film debut of Adam Driver.

J. Edgar opened the AFI Fest 2011 in Los Angeles on November 3, 2011, and had its limited release on November 9, followed by wide release on November 11. The film received mixed reviews from critics, although the performances were praised, and grossed $84 million worldwide. For his turn as Hoover, DiCaprio earned a nomination for a Golden Globe Award, while both he and Hammer earned Screen Actors Guild Award nods.

Plot

In 1919, after anarchists attempt to assassinate Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he puts his protegé J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a new division dedicated to purging radicals. Hoover quickly begins compiling a list of suspects. He meets Helen Gandy, a new secretary at the Justice Department, and takes her to the Library of Congress to show her the card catalog system he devised. He makes an awkward pass at her, then proposes to her. She refuses him, but agrees to become his personal secretary.

Hoover finds that the Department of Labor refuses to deport anyone without evidence of a crime. Learning that Anthony Caminetti, the Commissioner General of Immigration, dislikes the anarchist Emma Goldman, Hoover arranges to make her eligible for deportation and thereby creates a precedent of deportation for radical conspiracy. Following several such Justice Department raids of suspected radical groups, Palmer loses his job as Attorney General. His successor, Harlan F. Stone, appoints Hoover as director of the Justice Department's new Bureau of Investigation. Hoover meets lawyer Clyde Tolson, and hires him.

When the Lindbergh kidnapping captures national attention, President Herbert Hoover asks the Bureau to investigate. Hoover employs several novel techniques, including the monitoring of registration numbers on ransom bills and expert analysis of the kidnapper's handwriting. When the monitored bills begin showing up in New York City, the investigators find a filling station attendant who wrote down the license plate number of the man who gave him the bill. This leads to the arrest, and eventual conviction, of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh child.

After Hoover, Tolson, and Hoover's mother (with whom Hoover still lives) see the James Cagney film G Men, Hoover and Tolson go out to a club, where Hoover is seated with Anita Colby, Ginger Rogers, and Rogers' mother Lela. Rogers' mother asks Hoover to dance and he becomes agitated, saying that he and Tolson must leave, as they have a lot of work to do in the morning. When he gets home, he tells his mother that he dislikes dancing with girls. She tells him she would rather he be dead than a "daffodil". She insists on teaching him to dance, and they dance in her bedroom.

Hoover and Tolson go on a vacation to the horse races. That evening, Hoover tells Tolson that he cares deeply for him, and Tolson tells Hoover that he loves him. Hoover panics and claims that he wants to marry Dorothy Lamour. Tolson accuses Hoover of making a fool out of him and they end up fighting on the floor. Tolson suddenly kisses Hoover, who says that must never happen again; Tolson says that it won't, and tries to leave. Hoover apologizes and begs him to stay, but Tolson threatens to end their friendship if Hoover talks about another woman again. After Tolson leaves, Hoover says that he loves him, too.

Years later, Hoover feels his strength begin to decline, while Tolson suffers a stroke. Hoover tries to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into declining his Nobel Peace Prize, sending him a letter threatening to expose his extramarital affairs. King disregards this and accepts the prize.

Hoover tells Gandy to destroy his secret files after his death in order to prevent President Richard Nixon from possessing them. He visits Tolson, who urges him to retire. Hoover refuses, claiming that Nixon is going to destroy the bureau he has created. Tolson accuses Hoover of having exaggerated his involvement with key events of the Bureau. Moments later, Hoover tells Tolson that he needed Tolson more than he ever needed anyone else. He holds Tolson's hand, kisses his forehead, and leaves.

Hoover returns home from work, obviously weakened. Shortly after Hoover goes upstairs, his housekeeper calls Tolson, who goes to the house and finds Hoover dead next to his bed. A grief-stricken Tolson covers his friend's body. Nixon gives a memorial speech on television for Hoover, while several members of his staff enter Hoover's office and search through the cabinets and drawers in search of his rumored "confidential" files, but find nothing. In the last scene, Gandy destroys stacks of files.

Cast

Charlize Theron, who was originally slated to play Helen Gandy, dropped out of the project to do Snow White and the Huntsman, and Eastwood considered Amy Adams before finally selecting Naomi Watts as Theron's replacement.[5] Gunner Wright and David A. Cooper have cameos as future presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower[6] and Franklin D. Roosevelt, respectively, and are seen in the group of onlookers who arrive following the bombing at A. Mitchell Palmer's house.

Reception

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 43% based on 231 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Leonardo DiCaprio gives a predictably powerhouse performance, but J. Edgar stumbles in all other departments: cheesy makeup, poor lighting, confusing narrative, and humdrum storytelling."[7] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating to reviews, gives the film a normalized score of 59 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[8] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[9]

Roger Ebert awarded the film three-and-a-half stars (out of four) and wrote that the film is "fascinating" and "masterful". He praised DiCaprio's performance as a "fully-realized, subtle and persuasive performance, hinting at more than Hoover ever revealed, perhaps even to himself".[10] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, writing, "This surprising collaboration between director Clint Eastwood and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private."[11] David Denby in The New Yorker magazine also liked the film, calling it a "nuanced account" and calling "Eastwood's touch light and sure, his judgment sound, the moments of pathos held just long enough."[12]

J. Hoberman of The Village Voice wrote: "Although hardly flawless, Eastwood's biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers."[13]

Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a mixed review: "Any movie in which the longtime FBI honcho features as the central character must supply some insight into what made him tick, or suffer from the reality that the Bureau's exploits were far more interesting than the bureaucrat who ran it – a dilemma J. Edgar never rises above."[14] David Edelstein of New York Magazine reacted negatively to the film and said: "It's too bad J. Edgar is so shapeless and turgid and ham-handed, so rich in bad lines and worse readings." He praised DiCaprio's performance: "There’s something appealingly straightforward about the way he physicalizes Hoover's inner struggle, the body always slightly out of sync with the mind that vigilantly monitors every move."[15]

Box office

The film opened limited in 7 theaters on November 9, grossing $52,645,[16] and released wide on November 11, grossing $11.2 million in its opening weekend,[17] approximating the $12 million figure projected by the Los Angeles Times for the film's opening weekend in the United States and Canada.[2] J. Edgar went on to gross over $84.9 million worldwide and over $37.3 million at the domestic box office.[18] Breakdowns of audience demographics for the movie showed that ticket buyers were nearly 95% over the age of 25 and slightly over 50% female.

Accolades

List of awards and nominations
Date of ceremony Award Category Recipient(s) Result
January 27, 2012 AACTA Awards[19] Best Actor – International Leonardo DiCaprio Nominated
December 11, 2011 American Film Institute[20] Top 10 Films J. Edgar Won
January 12, 2012 Broadcast Film Critics Association[21] Best Actor Leonardo DiCaprio Nominated
January 15, 2012 Golden Globe Awards[22] Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama Nominated
December 1, 2011 National Board of Review[23] Top Ten Films J. Edgar Won
December 18, 2011 Satellite Awards[24] Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama Leonardo DiCaprio Nominated
January 29, 2012 Screen Actors Guild Awards[25] Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role Nominated
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role Armie Hammer Nominated

Historical accuracy

In an interview on All Things Considered, Yale University history professor Beverly Gage, who is writing a biography of Hoover, stated that the film accurately conveys that Hoover came to the FBI as a reformer seeking "to clean it up, to professionalize it," and to introduce scientific methods to its investigation, eventually including such practices as fingerprinting and bloodtyping. She praises DiCaprio for conveying the tempo of Hoover's speech. However, she notes that the film's central narrative device in which Hoover dictates his memoirs to FBI agents chosen as writers, is fictitious: "He didn't ever have the sort of formal situation that you see in the movie where he was dictating a memoir to a series of young agents, and that that is the official record of the FBI."[26] Historian Aaron J. Stockham of the Waterford School, whose dissertation was on the relationship of the FBI and the US Congress during the Hoover years, wrote on the History News Network of George Mason University, "J. Edgar portrays Hoover as the man who successfully integrated scientific processes into law enforcement investigations.... There is no doubt, from the historical record, that Hoover was instrumental in creating the FBI's scientific reputation."[27] Stockham notes that Hoover probably did not write the FBI–King suicide letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., as the film portrays: "While such a letter was written, Hoover almost certainly delegated it to others within the Bureau."[27]

References

  1. ↑ "J. Edgar (15)". British Board of Film Classification. 2011-11-16. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  2. 1 2 Kaufman, Amy (November 10, 2011). "Movie Projector: 'Immortals' poised to conquer box office". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved November 10, 2011.
  3. ↑ "J. Edgar (2011)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
  4. ↑ Ford, Alan (2010-03-15). "Clint Eastwood to Direct J. Edgar Hoover Biopic". FilmoFilia.com. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  5. ↑ Schwartz, Terri (2011-01-11). "Ed Westwick In, Charlize Theron Out Of Clint Eastwood's 'J. Edgar'" Archived January 12, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.. MTV.com. Retrieved 2011-01-12.
  6. ↑ "An Interview With Gunner Wright". The Gaming Liberty. April 23, 2011. Archived from the original on April 25, 2011. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
  7. ↑ "J. Edgar (2011)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  8. ↑ "J. Edgar Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  9. ↑ "J. Edgar". CinemaScore. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  10. ↑ Ebert, Roger (2011-11-08). "J. Edgar". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2011-11-09.
  11. ↑ McCarthy, Todd (2011-11-03). "J. Edgar: Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2011-11-07.
  12. ↑ Denby, David (2011-11-14). "The Man in Charge". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  13. ↑ Hoberman, J. (2011-11-09). "Great Man Theories: Clint Eastwood on J. Edgar". Village Voice. Retrieved 2011-11-09.
  14. ↑ Debruge, Peter (2011-11-04). "J. Edgar - Film Review". Variety. Retrieved 2011-11-07.
  15. ↑ Edelstein, David (2011-11-06). "First Word Problems". New York Magazine. Retrieved 2011-11-08.
  16. ↑ "Daily Box Office Results for November 9, 2011". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
  17. ↑ "Weekend Box Office Results for November 11–13, 2011". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
  18. ↑ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jedgar.htm
  19. ↑ "AACTA - Winners and Nominees - 2011". Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). Retrieved April 1, 2012.
  20. ↑ "'Bridesmaids,' 'Tree of Life,' 'Hugo' in AFI's top 10 films of 2011". LATimes.com. December 11, 2011. Retrieved December 11, 2011.
  21. ↑ (2011-12-13). "2012 Critics’ Choice Movie Awards Noms: Hugo And The Artist Dominate The Field". TheFabLife.com. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
  22. ↑ "69th Annual Golden Globe Awards — Full List Of Nominees". HollywoodLife.com. Retrieved 2011-12-15.
  23. ↑ "National Board of Review Announces 2011 Awards; HUGO Takes Top Prize". WeAreMovieGeeks.com. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
  24. ↑ "From WAR HORSE to THE MYSTERIES OF LISBON: Satellite Award Nominations 2011". Alt Film Guide. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
  25. ↑ O'Connell, Sean (2011-12-14). "Screen Actors Guild nominations revealed". HollywoodNews.com. Retrieved 2011-12-14.
  26. ↑ "Fact-Checking Clint Eastwood's 'J. Edgar' Biopic". All Things Considered. 2011-12-08. Retrieved 2012-03-25.
  27. 1 2 Stockham, Aaron J. (2011-12-12). ""J. Edgar" Fails to Deliver the Historical Goods". History News Network. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.