Earlier this year I wrote a review of Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter that complained of my
weariness with his recent lazy filmmaking. I almost began this review of his
latest film, J. Edgar, the same way
until I went back and read that one. But the fact remains that his biopic of
the man who was director of the old Bureau of Investigations and then first
Director of the FBI for a total of 48 years is tired, boring and absurd. This
is lazy storytelling at its worst.
J. Edgar Hoover always was and remains to this day
something of an enigma. We know him as the paranoid director who supposedly
investigated his enemies and people he believed to be subversives and radicals.
He’s widely suspected of illegally wiretapping and of keeping secret files that
were ultimately never recovered (at least in full). There is strong suspicion
he was a deeply closeted homosexual and may have maintained a long-term
relationship with his number two man Clyde Tolson. There’s even some silly
speculation that he was a cross-dresser. But we don’t know much about the man
and his motivations for his paranoia and his jealousy when it came to FBI
agents who absorbed more of the spotlight than he could stand.