Director Stone's bludgeoning style has always been the cinema's equivalent of
Grand Guignol and the results have ranged between the interesting (
The Doors
) and the loathsome (
Natural Born Killers
). Elements in his movies have been masterful, but there hasn't been one since the 80s that has truly worked.
In his second biopic of a US president (and his third film named for a commander-in-chief), he has unintentionally created a film that verges on burlesque, knowingly stitching together moments from the public record (the President choking on a pretzel while watching the football; the "can't get fooled again" moment) into a patchwork that ends up remarkably like pantomime.
Two ideas sustain this portrait of the 43rd president: he's a man who always wanted (and failed) to please his Daddy; and his sense of political destiny was driven by prayer and a sense of divine mission (in case you missed the latter point, Stone has Dylan sing
With God on Our Side
over the closing credits). Both ideas are interesting - though not new - but are not so much explored here as repeatedly enunciated and the film feels like a re-enactment that has more than a whiff of a tabloid current affairs show.
Fittingly, the performances are closer to parody than skilful mimicry. Newton's Condoleezza Rice, who simpers silently through most scenes, and sounds as though she's inhaled nitrous oxide before being throttled, is probably the worst, though Cromwell and Burstyn, the latter looking alarmingly like a talking waxwork, are a paint-by-numbers George and Barbara. Only Dreyfuss - a shark-like Dick Cheney - and Jones as a goofy Karl Rove seem to have realised the comic potential of their roles.
Brolin, for his part, whether being the drunken frat boy, the womanising oil man, or the son aching for his father's approval, never manages to convince us he's playing a real person. It's cruel but true that he just doesn't stack up against the colossally banal original.
It may seem glib to say that it is hard to make an interesting film about such a profoundly uninteresting man but one might have hoped that what will come to be seen as a turning point in human history could have inspired something more nuanced. In the end, it's hard not to feel about this film as one feels about the Bush presidency: relieved that it's over.
Peter Calder
Cast:
Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Scott Glenn, Toby Jones, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright
Director:
Oliver Stone
Running time:
133 mins
Rating:
M (contains offensive language)
