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FILM DETAILS

Certificate 15

Cast Leonardo DiCaprio Judi Dench Josh Lucas Armie Hammer Ed Westwick Damon Herriman.

Directors Clint Eastwood.

Screenwriters Dustin Lance Black.

Running Time 136 minutes

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J. Edgar
Hoover damned

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Plot
As he works on his memoirs at FBI headquarters, an aged J. Edgar Hoover (DiCaprio) explains how he went from fiercely ambitious law student to all-powerful Bureau boss. But can the G-man’s tales be trusted?

Review

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American legends don't come much more slippery than J. Edgar Hoover, the intelligence ogre who obsessively surveilled his nation’s most powerful citizens (both guilty and innocent) from his Washington fortress, but whose own private life remains a secret. Clint Eastwood’s making-of-a-monster epic strains to puzzle out how Hoover came to be, but ultimately doesn’t do justice to its complex subject.

The tricksy plot structure sees Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) dictating his life story to a series of young agent-stenographers (naturally, it turns out that not every word is accurate). Accordingly, the film flashes back to 1919, when the Palmer Raids were giving the 24 year-old Edgar a taste for harassing undesirables; returns to the typewriter; spins back to the Lindbergh-baby kidnapping case; forward again for some Kennedy-era wire-tapping, and so on. By the end it gets quite exhausting, for a movie about a man who spends most of his time behind a desk.

For Eastwood and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, Hoover’s sexuality is key. Throughout his life, the film speculates, he had feelings for his handsome colleague, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) — and presumably other men — that he never dared act on. In one chilling, stand-out scene, Edgar tries to explain to his mother (Judi Dench, wonderfully sour) that he feels no sexual attraction to women. Mrs. Hoover responds by telling of a sensitive boy, nicknamed ‘Daffodil’, who killed himself after being outed as a homosexual. “I’d rather have a dead son than a daffodil,” she sniffs with pursed lips. “Yes, mother,” he replies.

DiCaprio is a fairly bizarre pick as Hoover — he looked more like James Gandolfini or Bob Hoskins, and the Inception star isn’t the first person you’d think of when casting a celibate, fussy mummy’s boy. But he turns out to be more convincing than he was as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, summoning up a ferocity behind prosthetic jowls that’s credible enough to invite Oscar talk. He’s even good enough to stop one inspecting his dubious make-up too closely, though Hammer is more hamstrung by his, resembling a liver- spotted waxwork of Robert Duvall.

Strong as both actors are, neither is able to make much of an impact in a film that rushes through seven decades of US history (Naomi Watts fares even worse as Hoover’s secretary, whose reasons for staying at his side remain unclear). It’s a gutsy attempt to humanise the Vampire Of Pennsylvania Avenue, but might have been more satisfying as an HBO mini-series or a smaller, less sweeping tale.

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Average user rating for J. Edgar

RE: J.Edgar

I didn't expect this kind of movie from Clint Eastwood ....... the movie was really so slow ....... J.Edgar is full of lies .... ... More

Posted by johnnyfirday at 07:59, 21 September 2012 | Report This Post

RE: J.Edgar

This film is, by and large, saved from mediocrity from the performances of Di Caprio, Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts. The sequence-editing between the young J.Edgar and the old J.Edgar lacked any form of smooth progression and in the end became extremely clunky and abit of annoyance. Story wise I felt wanting more.Yes we get his strong relationship situation with his Mother (played by Judi 'boring' Dench),Clyde Tolson and his extreme dedication to the Bureaus progression,but other than ... More

Posted by OPEN YOUR EYES at 15:06, 17 September 2012 | Report This Post

J.Edgar

The powerful performance of DiCaprio almost manages to save J.Edgar from its slow and discouraging narrative and poor relevance to the time period. ... More

Posted by norgizfox at 23:02, 09 September 2012 | Report This Post

RE: J. Edgar

Seen it,loved it. A bit vain like the man himself. 4 stars. ... More

Posted by theEqualiser at 12:30, 24 January 2012 | Report This Post

RE: J. Edgar

multiple post sorry! ... More

Posted by Dr Lenera at 22:02, 23 January 2012 | Report This Post

RE: J. Edgar

As the face of law enforcement in America for almost 50 years, J. Edgar Hoover was feared and admired, reviled and revered. But behind closed doors, he held secrets that would have destroyed his image, his career and his life. As he dictates his memoirs to his biographer Agent Smith, we move back and forth through Hoover's long career, a career which spans gangsters, two world wars, a presidential assassination, the civil rights movements and other important events which helped shape the... More

Posted by Dr Lenera at 22:01, 23 January 2012 | Report This Post

J. Edgar

multiple post ... More

Posted by Dr Lenera at 21:55, 23 January 2012 | Report This Post

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