“Reagan” Review
Dennis Quaid stars as the titular President in "Reagan", a biopic detailing the life, triumphs and setbacks of the towering figure in the latter half of the 20th Century.
To make one thing perfectly clear, I don’t like Ronald Reagan. I think that, as president, his policies of conservatism and populism have deeply hurt this country and their effects can still be felt to this day. However, I don’t think that really matters when it concerns the new biopic made about the life of President Reagan. Just because I don’t like a person doesn’t mean that I can’t find their story fascinating and worthy of a cinematic adaptation. Some of my favorite biopics like “Steve Jobs”, “The Social Network” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” all focus on real life people whose actions were morally ambiguous and controversial at best.
When you combine his two terms with the one term of his successor/second-in-command, the Ronald Reagan/George H.W. Bush years dominated 12 years of foreign and domestic policy in America and oversaw an escalation of the Cold War, controversial economic policies and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. On top of that, Reagan spent years in Hollywood where he earned praise for his strong leadership of the Screen Actors Guild and the procuring of residuals for people whose films were being screened on television and criticism for his support of the Hollywood blacklist. Then there’s his governorship of California, his formative years as a young sports broadcaster and his late-life struggles with Alzheimer’s disease. With all of this happening to one man, any one of these turning points could make for an interesting film. But the biggest mistake “Reagan” made was trying to condense the entire life story of Ronald Reagan into a two-and-a-half hour running time, telling a literal cradle-to-grave story that has very little of merit to say about the man.
From the very first scene of the film, which depicts the attempted assassination of Reagan in 1981, it’s clear what the problems of this film are. “Reagan” is intent on showing you everything you already know about the man but with no sense of introspection. Written by Howard Klausner, the narrative doesn’t feel like a biopic or even a telling of a written biography. It comes across more like Reagan’s Wikipedia page brought to life at 24 frames per second.
Because of “Reagan’s” structure, the film moves too fast and too slow at the same time, covering too many elements of Reagan’s life so that there’s no sense of pacing. The audience may see the failed assassination play out but there’s not enough time set aside to show how it really affects the President and those around him because the film is already changing gears to showing the foreign relations between America and the U.S.S.R. As a result, we are never given the opportunity to know the man, just a series of recreations that feel like recreations from a History Channel documentary series.
The dialogue gives the phrase “on-the-nose” a whole new dimension and leaves very little for accomplished actors like Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight, Kevin Dillon and Penelope Ann Miller to work with. While I know actors like Quaid and Voight are conservative and leapt at the chance to be in a Reagan picture, they should still be given good lines and interesting development. These are people who have proven themselves time and time again with films like “Any Given Sunday”, “Traffic”, “Midnight Cowboy”, “Coming Home” and “Heat” and they deserve so much better.
While the film makes it very clear that it’s going to be a pro-Reagan story, Quaid’s performance feels too messianic and it makes him unrelatable. To see how this could have been done differently, look no further than Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”, a film about a president you’d think would be irresistible to mythologize. But not only did Speilberg and writer Tony Kushner keep the narrative confined to the last few months of Lincoln’s life, allowing scenes to breathe and showcase their importance, but the depiction of Lincoln is sympathetic but human. We see his wit and his charm but we also observe the complexities of his relationships with his colleagues, children and wife as well as the intricacies of his policies and why they’re important to him. Through this depiction of a short period in time, we have a far greater understanding of a person than “Reagan” provided. “Lincoln” is about quality, “Reagan” is about quantity.
The poor script is tough enough to handle but the direction by Sean McNamara leaves much to be desired. Watching “Reagan”, there’s a sense that McNamara wants to make the scenes of political drama really biting but there is no energy. During scenes where characters are discussing policy and are standing up, the camera may sometimes move to indicate a classic and satisfying Aaron Sorkin-type “walk and talk” but the characters just don’t move. So, we’re sometimes left with two or more people just standing still and talking with unexciting dialogue. The editing often follows suit and so many of these scenes are rendered ineffective even though their ramifications are pretty important.
The biggest sin “Reagan” has committed isn’t its overstuffed story, its choppy dialogue or its lack of a stand on the protagonist, it’s biggest crime is being dull. If you want to tell a sweeping story across decades with age-altering make-up being stretched to the limits, that’s fine but it has to still flow well. Some unbelievably true stories like “Malcolm X” and “Goodfellas” did this marvelously with a sense of urgency and passion, qualities “Reagan” is sorely lacking in. Instead of being a cohesive look at someone’s life and legacy, it comes across as a poorly curated greatest hits album.
If there’s anything to be taken from “Reagan” it’s that, no matter one’s political stances, there is a right way and a wrong way to cinematically depict powerful, iconic and sometimes controversial people. Just look no further than “The Iron Lady”, a film based on another conservative leader of the 1980s, that saw Meryl Streep win an Oscar for her performance as the titular Prime Minister. The difference is that “The Iron Lady” took an interesting stand with its subject and sought to have the audience understand her actions both politically and personally. “Reagan” is much too busy to make such choices and, as a result, it’s rendered a disappointing film.
