Thursday 11 June 2020

Richard Jewell (2019 Clint Eastwood & prod)

Paul Walter Hauser was in BlacKkKlansman as one of the racists. He's utterly credible as the title character.


Billy Ray wrote it based on the Vanity Fair article 'The Ballad of Richard Jewell' by Marie Brenner; Clint was attracted to it because it's about the little guy who's unfairly attacked and has only another little guy to fight his corner - and that the publicity surrounding his exoneration was so less than the accusations, and he's still known as 'the Atlanta bomber'. (He died of a heart attack aged 44.) The human touches (the Snickers bars, the confiscation and return of all mother's belongings) are welcome.

We liked Nina Arianda as Sam Rockwell's no-nonsense partner. With Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, Olivia Wilde. Jonah Hill and Leo di Caprio were initially to be Jewell and his attorney, thus their names remain on as producers.

We were marvelling at the fact that 89 year old Clint has no trouble with big action scenes, a big movie. Only Manoel de Oliveira is comparable - the Portuguese film-maker was still working in his 100s.

Shot by Yves Bélanger - relatively new to the Eastwood camp, also photographed The Mule - but edited by regular Joel Cox.

Q introduced a great joke at the end - when Richard's inspecting the trolley at the Justice Department - "There's another bomb!"

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