NOVEMBER 19, 2018
As faithful readers of this column know, I am and always have been an enormous political junkie. That’s entirely thanks to my grandmother, who, even when I was a mere sprite in grammar school, pulled me into her dark and wonderful world of local political-machine politics. Ever since then, for me, Election Night has almost always rivaled Oscar Night in my slavish devotion.
So that when I heard that director Jason Reitman (“Juno,” “Up in the Air”) was going to make a film about the legendarily doomed 1988 Presidential campaign by Democratic Sen. Gary Hart, my excitement level grew. This was a story, I thought, that needed to be told. And, then, when Hugh Jackman was cast in the leading role, that level suddenly went off the charts.
Now “The Front Runner” is playing everywhere, and I can dutifully report that…it’s a godawful mess.
Where to start?
Let’s begin with Jackman. Physically, he’s convincing, though I wouldn’t want to meet his terrifying hairpiece in a dark alley at night. Worse though (and I don’t know whether this was Reitman’s direction or Jackman’s choice), Gary Hart has been portrayed here as an enigma, with his character kept at arm’s length from what we in the audience are dying to know as to why this man is behaving the way he is. Hart, although having a reputation as a savvy politico, insists on not leveling with the public, maintaining instead that his private life is private and that his life is none of his voters’ business. A noble position on paper, but one that’s disastrous politically.
That particular disaster was an affair that Hart carried on in the early days of his campaign with Donna Rice (Sara Paxton), a Phi Beta Kappa graduate who is blessed (or cursed) with a model’s looks and attracts the attention of Hart while on a vacation on a yacht named “Monkey Business.” Prior to the Hart affair, politicians’ indiscretions were usually handled by the press by turning a blind eye, as recalled here, somewhat nostalgically, by Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee (Alfred Molina).
The Hart case changed everything with politicos’ relationship with the press when Miami Herald reporter Tom Feidler (Steve Zissis, very good) stakes out Hart’s D.C. townhouse to chronicle his movements with Rice. Feidler’s reporting of the affair (with photographic evidence) created an unprecedented (at that time) feeding frenzy among the press (pictured above), one that might seen quaint now but created shock waves back then.
Given how our current President describes the press as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people,” how this particular portrayal of the press as portrayed in “The Front Runner” is absolutely the wrong message that we should be sending to the American people right now.
But even if the timing was unfortunate, “The Front Runner” would be a pretty bad film whenever it was released. The pacing is sluggish, the dialogue interplay among the characters feels like a first draft (and one that definitely needs much more polishing) and the film’s conclusion just sort of lies there.
Reitman’s direction is fine — he gets the period images of drinking scotch at lunch, the overflowing ashtrays, and shoebox-sized portable phones just right — but here he seems strangely fixated with the films of Robert Altman. The late director did do political films, such as his Oscar-winning “Nashville,” but Reitman seems more interested in emulating Altman’s style as much as his content. “The Front Runner’s” lengthy single-take opening shot seems right out of Altman’s “The Player,” and his overlapping dialogue style, familiar from “M*A*S*H” and “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” is recreated here with characters (mostly men, of course) talking over each other at roundtables at both Hart headquarters and at The Washington Post.
Other than Jackman, the performances are pretty good. Vera Farmiga, who earned an Oscar nomination for Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” is very moving as Hart’s wronged wife Lee, and another Reitman veteran, Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, portrays Hart’s campaign manager, the hard-nosed Bill Dixon. We all could guess that Simmons could do a role like this in this sleep, but God love him, he still gives it his all, never phoning it in. And a shout-out to Paxton, whose Donna Rice delivers a moving monologue about her fear that, aware of her looks, she’ll be dismissed as a bimbo. And the tragedy is that, for all she that has subsequently achieved, we still think of her as the woman in Gary Hart’s lap.
What worries me about the failure of “The Front Runner” is that it might keep other filmmakers from taking on political subject. American film in the last 50 years has had a remarkable tradition of films about films about politics, which include not only “Nashville” but “The Candidate” and “All the President’s Men” as well. And we’ve got Adam McKay’s “Vice” around the corner. Pray that’s it’s better than “The Front Runner.”
GRADE: C-
