Changeling

Woman's whisper, mother's cry

J. Edgar

33/100 (137 min, 2011)
Plot: 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.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Dustin Lance Black
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts

Iron Man

What the hell happened to Clint Eastwood? He used make great films - "Mystic River", "Million Dollar Baby", "Changeling" and "Letters to Iwo Jima". Then came "Gran Torino" which while still being a decent film featured absolutely awful supporting cast which I can only assume was chose by someone blindfolded and drunk. And then last year there was misguided "Hereafter". But "J. Edgar" is so horribly bland, chaotic and messy which leads me to the one conclusion - it is definitely Eastwood's worst directing effort in years. I mean it's so bad it managed to make JFK assassination-related scenes look boring on screen, quite possibly for the first time in movie history.

I can't decide what was worst - the script or the execution of the story. The plot of the film focuses on way too many things without really telling us anything relevant and jumps around much like in "The Iron Lady" - 2011 was definitely not a good year for biopics. Much as with a misfire about Margaret Thatcher we observe Edgar looking back at his life, frequently not in chronological order. Most of the interesting things that happened during his days as the chef of FBI are omitted, in fact we don't learn that much from watching this movie. It's 2,5 hours long but I can't remember anything especially interesting happening in it or even anything actually happening in the film. The movie drags on mercilessly, the characters are never fully established on screen, sometimes they even disappear from the picture never to be seen again. It's especially baffling since Eastwood always had such a good hand to chose scripts he directs.