FILM

USA 2011 137 mins Dir: Clint Eastwood Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench

Given this J. Edgar Hoover biopic's unenthusiastic US reviews and mediocre box office performance, which have reportedly scuppered Clint Eastwood's Oscar hopes, it's a moderate pleasure to report that the film gets the job done adequately enough. Sure, it's a lengthy meat'n'potatoes drama with some decidedly dodgy prosthetics. But for Eastwood, coming off the back of two of the worst films of his career ('Invictus', 'Hereafter'), this is a move in the right direction. After much speculation, it also turns out that 'Milk' writer Dustin Lance Black's script does indeed address Hoover's homosexuality and penchant for cross-dressing, albeit in a rather understated way.

Spanning half a century and framed by the device of a cantankerous old Hoover (DiCaprio, in an extended Oscar pitch) dictating his self-serving memoirs to a succession of hunky young men, 'J. Edgar' is not, as one might expect of the Republican Eastwood, a hatchet job. But nor does it exhibit much warmth towards its relentlessly commie-hating subject, revealing his hypocrisy, racism, empire-building, vanity and paranoia as its runs through his 'greatest hits' as all-powerful FBI chief (the anti-racketeer years, the Lindbergh baby case, stitching up Martin Luther King and JFK, etc). Plenty of screen time is also given to the three Significant Others in Hoover's life: his smothering, homophobic mother Annie (Dench); loyal secretary and abortive beard Helen Gandy (Watts); and, most significantly, Clyde Tolson (Hammer) - the unqualified yet handsome fellow who became Hoover's deputy and longtime companion. Eastwood avoids prurient speculation, suggesting that the relationship, while real, was chaste. But whereas DiCaprio carries himself convincingly as an old man, Armie Hammer is lumbered with terrible ageing make-up that makes him look more like a young burns victim. (Robin Askew)

Website http://jedgarmovie.warnerbros.com/

Opens: January 20

Copyright Robin Askew 2012