What's going on guys?
I'm Tyler and I'm here to let you know that "Richard Jewell" is NoPerfectMovie!  And it follows the real-life tale of a security guard
who in 1996 discovered a bomb during the Summer Olympics and helped the authorities evacuate,
only for the FBI
to falsely accuse him of placing the bomb there himself so that he could be a false hero, & the media taking advantage of the suspicion.
And Jewell is played by Paul Walter Hauser who not only bears a lot of physical resemblance to the real-life Jewell,
but also gives a
nuanced yet, brutally honest performance-and I say brutally honest because he plays a man who is smart, but also,
from beginning to end has this need to
explain himself and what type of person he is, and explain things that he REALLY should not be saying when he's under suspicion of murder,
but he still has to come across as being a likable guy and he pulls it off with this very
quiet line delivery and relaxed body language that makes him seem gentle and innocent and makes it seem like he's bottling up a lot of
emotions throughout the movie and you believe that for every second. Kathy Bates as well for those exact same reasons gives a much more
relaxed and underplayed performance as a woman who has to experience a lot of rapid changes in such a small amount of time;
Phones are constantly ringing, the cops and the reporters are outside her house
24/7, but her emotional breakdowns never felt over-the-top:
There isn't a scene of her breaking down and crying every 10 minutes, you wait until the very end for her to finally
let out her frustrations while still trying to hide a lot of hidden pain and...
It made her performance so much more heartbreaking! and Sam Rockwell stole every scene
he was in as Jewell's attorney Watson Bryant. He had a great sarcastic sense of humour,
you believed the fact that he's the most vocal and kind of over-the-top
character because he has to do all the public speaking. He has to deal with the fact that his client
regularly makes a fool out of himself and yet there's no Hollywood-style
big life-changing moment to why he wants to help jewel as a client. He's just a lawyer doing his job. And that's it!
And that's really all you need! Now Clint Eastwood has always been known to be a fast-paced director:
He loves to shoot only one or two takes per scene to make it seem like the actors are giving a much more natural,
improvised performance to make it seem like they're real people and for the most part that usually works out in his movies,
Sometimes it comes off as being a little
lazy and rushed and I can understand why he thinks that's a great style.
I don't know if I would do it personally, but I'd have to you know, make a movie in order to find out.
But what surprised me the most was that the casting for this movie was done last June and...
It only been started filming like a couple weeks afterwards!
That's how much he trusts his actors with the material and I gotta respect that and I love the
low-key film noir style lighting that he uses during the interrogation scenes because whenever
Richard is in one shot and he has all of this shadow cast over his face
you get the sense that he's just like in a corner in that he has nowhere else to go!
And yet that style can sometimes come across as being too over-the-top,
Especially with Olivia Wilde's character; whenever she's cast in a shadow
like blinds or half silhouette
it makes her feel like a comic book supervillain and...
that kind of leads into the villains of this movie: the FBI agent played by Jon Hamm who gives
also a very good & restrained performance, and Olivia Wilde as a real-life reporter who basically leaked the FBI's
suspicions and...
I'll say this-during the interrogation scenes, that was some of the most gritty intense stuff in the movie because the
shocking true life facts combined with Clint Eastwood's style just made it
seem near impossible to believe and then when you look this stuff up you realize
there was a lot of shady stuff going on and how
you realize how desperate people were to find a culprit for such a heinous crime.
And I think that's what they were going for with Olivia Wilde's character,
but at the same time a lot of people have been complaining about her character specifically for one specific scene...
and yeah, I'm not gonna act like I don't get why people hate at that scene, but...
Honestly, that wasn't even the worst moment for me for her as a character. The worst moment for her is when she makes
FoxNews anchors look more realistic by
following Sam Rockwell breaking into his car and
then
springing out and saying hi as he's driving in the middle of the highway. It was just like:
Oh sure, you'll get a great story-you could get into a car crash and die but... whatever-you'll scare the crap out of him!
This isn't gritty realistic Clint Eastwood material, this is Anchorman 3. She has an evil smile,
she laughs when her story makes the top news and they try to make it
not sound like an evil laugh and they try to make it seem like she's
legitimately believing her own bullshit
but I didn't buy into that for one second because they don't... they don't respect-this movie doesn't really respect the journalists who legitimately
believed they were doing the right thing because let's be honest:
Not every reporter in this case was out just looking for a story and didn't give a shit about hurting innocent lives,
they legitimately believed the law enforcement was doing a good job.
That's how tricky and complex the real-life situation is and when it comes to the people who had suspicions about Jewell
it's a little too simplistic and one-sided and... which is interesting because the most fascinating part of the movie for me was
Jewell, as a character who feels this need to claim himself to be a member of law enforcement
especially after he saved so many people's lives and every time he's under suspicion and he tries to
enunciate a bunch of facts that make him seem like a smart cop and when in reality it just makes him look even more like
a terrorist!
The themes of how an innocent person can make themselves look guilty by giving in to the pressure of the situation!
That was the most interesting theme of the movie for me and I love how they explore that theme,
but when they have to go back and point out that these characters are wrong-
they obviously have to point out that they're wrong, but they're so-
Billy Ray's script is just so preachy at
doing that! And it really hurts these actors performances because this is a top-notch cast and Olivia Wilde has done
some great work in the past. I don't know
what she was thinking or how she can and defend how unrealistic this portrayal is!
Now despite those last couple minutes
I am still glad that I saw "Richard Jewell": the acting for the most part was really good, the direction and Billy Ray's script
for the most part were good-they were hard-hitting and gritty and realistic, but when they weren't,
it really took me out of the movie. And for those reasons, I'm gonna give "Richard Jewell"
3.5/5! Guys, thanks as always for watching!
Be sure to let me know in the comments below what you thought of "Richard Jewell" and be sure to LIKE, subscribe,
And check out my other reviews at noperfectmovie.com. Take care!
