J. Edgar

  J. Edgar

Imagine Entertainment, 2011

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench

Two and a half stars 

Ever since Clint Eastwood delivered his last (and by many accounts, greatest) Western with the near-perfect 1993 Best Picture/Director winner Unforgiven, his films have explored a vast variety of subjects and characters, both historical and fictional, featured many of the most respected actors in the business (and earned a good number of them Oscar nominations), and have made him one of the most prolific directors currently working. I must confess that my experience with the Eastwood oeuvre is rather lacking, but of what I've seen, his films range from favorites (Unforgiven) to other Best Picture/Director winners (Million Dollar Baby) to films that would just miss my favorites list, but that I still respect in every way (Mystic River), to flawed but compelling character pieces (last year's Hereafter), to enjoyable star vehicles for the man himself (his farewell to acting in 2008's Gran Torino), all the way to Invictus, a film that I thought to be directionless and unnecessary, and one that really only justified it's existence because it gave Morgan Freeman a chance to play Nelson Mandela, a performance that comes nowhere close to his best. J. Edgar, much like the majority of Eastwood's recent output, is a compelling, well-made and exquisitely acted piece of cinema, and just like most of his recent films, it suffers from flaws that make it hard to enjoy completely.

The first thing that must be said about this film is that Leonardo DiCaprio owns the title role and gives one of his best performances to date here. It's a showy piece of acting, as DiCaprio's portrayal spans many years and tackles a complex character full of contradictions, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Academy chooses to recognize him come nomination time, even if they ignore the film apart from his performance. There's not a moment of this film where DiCaprio isn't fully committed to the character, and that's what gives the film it's pulse and elevates it above what it would be with a lesser actor in the role. I've generally liked DiCaprio in his more likable roles, like in last years Inception, or his role opposite Tom Hanks in Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, an all time favorite of mine, but here, he brings complexity to a character that could easily have become a villainous performance. That the audience never quite knows whether they like or hate Edgar is one of the film's greatest triumphs, though some of the credit must be given to Eastwood, who's built his career on exploring the antihero.

If DiCaprio is the film's greatest strength, then it's the script, penned by Academy Award Winner Dustin Lance Black (who won for Milk), that is it's greatest weakness. The film opens with a fantastic hook: the bombing of the house of Hoover's predecessor at the FBI (though it's not called that yet, to give an idea for the vast amount of time this screenplay spans), a piece of communist activity that, as the movie tells us, pushes Hoover towards everything he will fight for throughout his life. The film draws the audience in right from the get go, and then relies on DiCaprio to carry it for the remainder of it's running time, something that works for a little while, but falls apart as the film reaches it's second and third acts. Black saddles the movie with the rather uninspired format of Hoover telling his life story to someone else, which results in seemingly random jumps through time that make the screenplay feel jarring, sloppy, and, worst of all, unfocused. We do get a sense of who this man is, but the characters around him and the relationships he has with them feel so thoroughly one-dimensional that it's hard to understand what Black was going for. Is this a history? Is it a character study? Is it a political film? It has shades of all of those, but it never becomes one of them fully. And DiCaprio's stellar supporting cast, featuring the great Judi Dench as his mother, Naomi Watts as his secretary and The Social Network's Armie Hammer as a longtime colleague, could have been the basis for a dynamite ensemble cast, but the film is so singularly focused on J. Edgar that his supporters end up feeling like they're simply there to fulfill a very specific function.

I don't really understand how this could have happened with the script, since Black's work on Milk was almost the opposite. He got to the emotional core of that story; he found out what made the characters tick, and it was his exceptional work that drove the film and allowed Sean Penn to do what he needed to do to earn his second Oscar (the first, naturally, earned for an Eastwood film). But Penn wasn't the only one who shone brightly in that film, and it wasn't because it had a stronger slate of actors than this one, but because Black fully understood the supporting characters as well. He understood the relationship between Penn and James Franco's characters, he understood Dan White (played in a career best performance by James Brolin), and he understood that his pleasant outward facade hid a troubled, unpredictable man underneath, and that was why the moment when he pulled the trigger and we saw Harvey Milk fall was still so shocking, even though we already knew it was coming. The final minutes of that film are some of the most emotionally moving I've ever seen, and that's mostly thanks to the way Black built the story, how he established the characters and their relationships, and how he tied it up at the end: it was, in my opinion, the way a biopic should be made. He tries to frame the story here similarly, but he's missing the key aspects: the emotional connection, the supporting character depth and the relationships therein. It makes sense, I guess: Milk was a passion project for Black, who was inspired by Harvey Milk when he was struggling with his own sexuality. He tries to find homosexual themes in this film as well, and it almost works: the relationship between Edgar and Clyde Tolson (Hammer) was rumored to be a gay relationship, and Black goes beyond mere hints here, which isn't necessarily a problem as the relationship between DiCaprio and Hammer is the only one that I really bought into (unlike the mother-son connection between Dench and DiCaprio), but then we find ourselves again with the problem that the film is just trying to do too many things, and not doing any of them in great enough detail.

Despite all of this, I did enjoy J. Edgar. There's a better film here than the one that finds it's way out, but it's beautifully shot, with some impressive (and some questionable) aging make-up, and every actor here does their best with the material given to them. DiCaprio obviously shines the brightest, and that's how it should be, but Hammer shouldn't be overlooked, since he's clearly announced himself as an actor to watch with strong supporting roles these past two years. Ultimately, it's another good, if significantly flawed film from Eastwood, and even though I wouldn't call it among the year's best, I would still recommend it on the strength of DiCaprio's performance alone. He's never been one of my favorite actors, though I love some of his films (Catch Me if You Can, The Departed, Inception) and admire his work in others that I didn't quite love (The Aviator, Shutter Island). I'm almost certain that he'll find his way to an Oscar one day, and if this is the film to do it, I wouldn't be sorry at all. Something tells me he's not due quite yet, but stranger things have happened, and on that possibility alone, the film is a must-see for those who care about such things.

Margin Call

 Margin Call

Before the Door Pictures, 2011

Directed by J.C. Chandor

Starring: Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany 

Three and a half stars

Margin Call, a thriller that revolves around a group of key employees at an Investment Firm on the eve of a financial disaster, opens with Paul Dale (Stanley Tucci), a well respected, long-time risk management worker for the company, getting fired in the midst of a mass company layoff. Tucci, who's become one of my favorite actors in recent years, thanks almost exclusively to his wide range of fantastic supporting roles (from a scene-stealing sarcastic father in Easy A, to a supportive husband in Julie & Julia, all the way to his horrific transformation into a rapist and murderer in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones), and this portrayal can be added to that list easily. He exits the film for a large portion of the action, but when he reappears for some closure later on, in a tour-de-force scene with Paul Bettany (who plays a senior trader with a reckless side), it's one of the best moments of a great film. 

Tucci is only the tip of the iceberg for this terrific ensemble cast. Much of the action centers on Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) and Penn Badgley (Easy A, Gossip Girl), two lower-down employees who find themselves entangled in a complicated web of corporate decisions, moral ambiguity and financial breakdown after Peter (Quinto), discovers that the company has accumulated a massive number of worthless mortgage-backed securities on their books, which, if allowed to remain, will decimate the company; as Peter puts it, "the loss will exceed the current value of the company." So begins the night from hell for Peter and his buddy Seth (Penn Badgley), a less brilliant-minded but equally well-meaning employee. Quinto and Badgley are both highly likable young actors, and both have exhibited a fair bit of talent (Quinto was a pitch-perfect Spock in J.J. Abrams' excellent Star Trek reboot, while Badgley's been tapped to play enigmatic singer Jeff Buckley in the upcoming picture Greetings From Tim Buckley). Both exude inexperience and naivety throughout the film as they find themselves embroiled in increasingly questionable moral territory. Neither actor goes far beyond what they've done in previous films, but both are welcome additions to this stellar cast.

As the night goes on, all the higher-ups are brought in: Peter and Seth's boss Will (Bettany), his boss, Sam (a brilliant Kevin Spacey), and the company's CEO (Jeremy Irons, in a typically villainous portrayal), and they find themselves in a dilemma. There will be huge consequences of their actions no matter which way they turn, and their ultimate decision, as cold and calculated as it is, feels frighteningly logical. By the time the film reaches it's climax, a scene that plays out with little but audio to build tension, director J.C. Chandor (in an impressively evenhanded debut) has painted a horrific portrait of corporate darkness (personified mostly by Irons) that's only so disturbing because it hits so close to home. In the penultimate scenes, we find ourselves looking out over New York City and Wall Street from high above; it all looks so peaceful and idyllic, but we share the characters' surreal feeling of foresight: knowing that all hell is about to break loose and knowing, in a way, that they caused it all. Their solution won't solve a thing, and everyone knows it, but no one can walk away.

Perhaps the most interesting artistic decision that Chandor makes is with his ending: he doesn't focus on the consequences of the firm's actions, nor does he show us the world outside of the company headquarters, the everyday people whose lives will be impacted by the economic disaster the firm has handed them, but he doesn't need too. Although a year is never given, it's obvious that the financial disaster depicted here represents what happened in the fall of 2008, and why would Chandor need to show the impact of Wall Street's collapse when it can still be seen and felt in every city in America? Chandor's film is very zeitgeist-appealing, and it could easily rely on those points to carry it to it's finale, which is way it's left-turn at the film's conclusion is so refreshing. The final scene depicts Spacey digging a grave for his dog (who he had to put to sleep the night before, just before he was called in to deal with the firm's crisis) in his ex-wife's front yard. She comes out to see who's making all the noise the two end up sharing a deeply personal conversation. It's one of the film's best scenes, not because it builds tension, not because it's thrilling or pulse-pounding or shocking in anyway, but because it feels so completely human, even after this character just played a role in something that could be considered borderline inhumane. Spacey, who's played the sympathetic character all along, comes out broken and regretful, unhappy with the decisions he's made, both personally and professionally, and in the final scene, we feel for him, despite what he's done. It's good writing, but it wouldn't work if the actor weren't so committed to playing the character with complete realism, and Spacey gives one of his best performances ever right here. Whether it's considered a lead role or a supporting one, I fully believe Spacey should receive Oscar attention for this, even though he doesn't really need it (he does have two of them already).

Margin Call is a terrific thriller, and it builds tension to a pulse-pounding point without a punch ever being thrown, a shot ever being fired, or a bomb ever going off (though, sometimes it feels like any of those things could happen). It's driven by good direction (Chandor is one to follow in the coming years), a solid script and an even better cast, featuring both hardened Hollywood vets and promising newcomers, that sits alongside the likes of The Ides of March and The Help at the top of the list for best ensemble casts this year. It's one of my favorite films of the year so far: a dark, complex and thrilling look at what could have happened just before the recession began, a memorable zeitgeist-appealing picture, and a stirring and surprisingly personal character piece. It's destined to go on being overlooked, both commercially and during the upcoming awards season, but I personally think it deserves top marks and significant recognition. Here's hoping at least Spacey grabs a nomination.