J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood, 2011): USA

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.  Viewed at Fairview Twin, Santa Barbara, CA.

   J. Edgar is J. Edgar Hoover, the first appointed Director of the FBI, who served nearly 50 years in this position under six different Presidents.

J. Edgar (Leonardo DiCaprio) begins his career in the early 1920’s working for the BOI (Bureau of Investigation), eventually heading the Bureau before its official transition into the FBI in 1935.  Believing that the Bureau should be void of politics, J. Edgar is assured that he will report to the U.S. Attorney General’s office, who ironically is appointed by the sitting President, and later this fact comes back to bite him in the ass.

Several significant criminal investigations occur during Hoover’s leadership such as the transporting and selling of liquor related to Prohibition, the Depression era bank robberies of John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly (the public enemies) and the Red Scare subversives.  Hoover deals with many of these challenges by organizing group stings, as opposed to individual arrests, and also by securing firearms for his previously unarmed men.

As the film peruses Hoover’s early accomplishments, it decidedly focuses on the heinous though terribly fascinating, Lindbergh baby kidnapping case, known as the crime of the century.

In March 1932, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh (Josh Lucas) is mysteriously abducted from his crib and the New Jersey State Police, having jurisdiction, are called to the scene where H. Norman Schwarzkopf is in charge.  Schwarzkopf and his men are depicted as negligent, when Hoover observes the officers traipsing through and destroying important forensic evidence.

Hoover, convinced that the Bureau must be placed in charge, seizes control of the situation and has the foresight to implement a crime lab for testing fingerprints, handwriting analysis, footprints, and even the wood from a makeshift ladder in order to re-enact the crime.

Assisting Hoover, is Deputy Director Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), who placidly attempts to seduce Hoover, as well as guide his conscience.  Hoover is ambivalent in his sexuality, and waffles between his attraction to Tolson and his commitment to the Bureau.

Well written, and though never officially confirmed, writer Dustin Lance Black (Milk), takes liberties with the position that Hoover and Tolson were domestic partners, even hinting at his supposed transgender issues in an ambiguous cross-dressing episode.

Eastwood frenetically transitions from real time to the distant past, back to real time, which effectively subjects the audience to Hoover’s frenzied enthusiasm in work, and the dichotomy of his personal life.  There are a number of cross-cuts, such as Hoover and Tolson at the racetrack in real time, cross-cut to the men in the same set up, but in the past.  J. Edgar is Clint’s best work since Gran Torino in 2008.

Despite Armie Hammer’s unconvincing makeup job as an older Tolson, he smoothly portrays the deputy as quietly sensitive, though completely competent.  The film is well-cast with Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, Hoover’s loyal secretary, and Dame Judi Dench as Mrs. Hoover, J. Edgar’s doting mother.  DiCaprio’s transformation is brilliant, as he transitions from an eager young man with ideals, to the elder embittered and cynical man with a questionable legacy.