An average movie

To be honest, I kinda of lost faith in Clint Eastwood a couple of years ago, however, since this movie had been rather well received, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, once again, Eastwood chose to tell the true story of an American hero and, while the end-result was at least miles better than the abysmal ‘The 15:17 to Paris’, to be honest, I still struggled to care about the damned thing. I mean, the whole thing was well made and there was definitely a solid cast involved (Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates) but the story was just too pathetic for my taste. Of course, you might argue that it is how it all went down back then but, even so, this tale might have been strong on paper but I thought it was hardly fascinating. Basically, Richard Jewell was maybe a loser but it was just obvious that the guy was completely harmless and the fact that it took the FBI months to figure this out is just staggering and shows the lack of competence of everybody involved in this investigation. At least, they didn’t plant some evidence to completely frame the poor fellow. The worst character was probably the one played by Olivia Wilde though. Indeed, in my opinion, the way this character was developed was terrible and actually rather misogynist. Sure, that this journalist was some kind of vulture looking for any juicy story was not really shocking but the way she would sleep with anyone to get some intel was just pushing it too far (and, apparently, it was completely made up for this movie). Basically, you spend 2 hours with some rather pathetic characters getting stuck into a pathetic story so it didn’t feel really rewarding, even with a strong cast and a solid director like Eastwoord behind the wheel. Anyway, to conclude, even if I thought it was slightly disappointing, I have to admit that it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.