In 7 words or less: J. Edgar Hoover lives a life.
What's it all About? Biopic about the life and times of J. Edgar Hoover, encompassing his 48 year career and the genesis of the FBI. The film also attempts to look at J. Edgar's fiercely secretive and mysterious private life.
Best bits? Hmmm, there isn't really much to say. This film didn't interest me visually and felt more like an exercise than a story, I therefore treated it more like a history lesson. I'm quite interested in this area and enjoyed learning about the origins of the FBI and Hoover's thirst for using forensic science (a new concept back then) to crack cases and solve crimes. It's fascinating to me that pre FBI you could quite happily go around robbing banks with your tommy gun in one state, then once you had your fill, simply cross a state line and be a free man?!
DiCaprio puts in a great shift playing the enigmatic head of the FBI. He's turned into an astonishing actor and tackles this role in such a fierce manner; totally embodying every facet of his character. I don't know if DiCaprio's take on J. Edgar Hoover is accurate, it may be wildly misjudged, but watching an actor in his prime like this is insanely engaging.
Did it make you think thoughts? I'm tired of biopics been told like this. At the beginning of the film an old J. Edgar sits down with a journalist and regales a rather inaccurate, embellished version of his career. What we see from then on in is a series of flashbacks telling J. Edgar's story in an excruciatingly dull, boring and predictable way. I would have much rather seen this from a more 'real time' perspective and dumped all the endless reflection scenes.
This film paints Hoover in a worryingly finite way given that so much of the material is surly speculative. His private life is one of the more interesting aspects of his life for sure, but to stab wildly in the dark at this subject without that much to go on seems a little presumptuous. The scenes that are meant to shock you, where you find out certain revelations about Hoover, are seriously clunky and smack of 'we don't really know much about this bit, just keep shocking them with more homosexual stuff, oh, I read he was a cross-dresser, bung that in too. What else is there on wikipedia?' In parts, it's a real mess.
Young actors being made to look really, really old is always a problem. Mostly it's unintentionally funny and tears you out of an otherwise engaging story. DiCaprio pulls it off in this, it takes a few minutes to adjust but he smashes it out of the park. Unfortunately the same can't be said for his co star, Armie Hammer (Winklevoss twin from The Social Network) who plays Hoovers right hand man and debatable love interest; his makeup is awful! It's like they did DiCap and then just forgot about this poor sod. His body language is like that of an 11 year old in drama class being asked to act like his granny.
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| Ha, silly. |
Rating (out of 100%): 57% Despite an incredible performance from DiCap, this is a heavily floored film and quite badly handled by Eastwood. Having a slight interest in the subject matter will go a long way to making this more enjoyable.
