J. Edgar Review

The Oscar-winning team of director Clint Eastwood, writer Dustin Lance Black, and producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer bring the saga of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the big screen with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.

An aging Hoover serves as his own "unreliable narrator" as he dictates his memoirs to a series of young FBI agents. The film chronicles: Hoover's rise to become the FBI's long-serving director and his mission to make it a sophisticated law enforcement agency; Hoover's war against communists; the tragic kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's (Josh Lucas) baby; the Depression-era manhunt for outlaws; and locking horns with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan).

The authoritarian Hoover's paranoia grows over the years, as he targets anyone he deems a threat to his power and glory. All of the aforementioned events, however, are the backdrop for the real focus of the film, which is Hoover's relationships with his mother (Judi Dench), his secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), and longtime companion Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

J. Edgar attempts to humanize one of America's most notorious men, but comes up short in justifying why you should care about who he really was. Hoover was a man who guarded his secrets (both personal and professional), compiling secret files and enemies' lists even though his personal behavior wasn't much better than many of those he targeted. While we get some rudimentary understanding of what made him tick – particularly a scene as a young boy where his domineering mother told him he would someday become a great man who'd restore the family name – Hoover largely remains a murky subject here.

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The motivations and behavior of the people closest to Hoover are even more frustratingly incomplete. We never really get an idea of who Tolson and Gandy were. Why did they love this man? Why were they so loyal to him even after repeatedly admonishing and cautioning him? Gandy is even more of a cipher than Tolson, who is at least shaded enough by Hammer's stealthy performance that we can fill in some of the blanks. If we don't get why they love Hoover, and he doesn't ever seem to understand or accept that his ways are as hurtful to his country as they've been helpful, then how or why should we care about him and what he wants?

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the best actors of his generation, and he delivers a solid performance here – but it is a Performance, as much as Sean Penn's Oscar-bait turn in Milk was (meaning that Leo will probably also win Best Actor). With his affected speech, distracting old age makeup and constant grandstanding, DiCaprio's Hoover is always in your face. His best moments are the quieter ones with Watts and Hammer (who, I dare say, steals some of his scenes). The film's old age makeup is awful. Hammer basically wears a Freddy Krueger mask as the elderly Tolson, while DiCaprio's makeup looks better in moodier lighting than it does in daylight, but you're always aware that these are actors buried under latex rubber. Also, DiCaprio's voice never changes as his character ages, which isn't true to life and betrays all the makeup he's buried under to seem old.


Dench is her usual strong self as Edgar's mother, whose best scene is where she basically warns him to stay in the closet. Speaking of that, the movie leaves no doubt as to Tolson's orientation; Hoover is depicted as possibly bisexual since he was initially interested in Gandy before hiring her as his secretary. While there's one argument scene between Hoover and Tolson that comes perilously close to camp, the handling of their much-speculated relationship is deftly underplayed, adhering to Oscar Wilde's line of "the love that dare not speak its name."

Eastwood's measured approach is sometimes at odds with Black's script, which delivers its post-9/11 commentary on the abuse of power with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Not every biopic should be about sympathetic people we can root for, but J. Edgar neither provokes outrage nor produces sympathy for its subject. It's simply there. A figure as divisive and compelling as J. Edgar Hoover demands a movie that provokes some kind of debate other than whether Leonardo DiCaprio will win an Oscar.

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