RICHARD JEWELL

In 1996 a bomb exploded at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. The FBI's prime suspect was Richard Jewell, the security guard who discovered the bomb and "Richard Jewell" is also the name of the superb film that Clint Eastwood has made about the case; it's one of his very best movies. Eastwood is almost ninety years old. Most men his age would be content to sit on their front porch and watch the world go by; Eastwood is a man who gets up off his ass and tries to do something about the state of the world he's living in. He cares. Politically conservative and a staunch Republican he is a great believer in 'doing the right thing', even if politically he and I wouldn't always agree on how to go about it. He's also a great director, arguably the best American director still working today.

Eastwood is, as I've said before, a classicist; there are few tricks, if any, in his work. He edits his films for the maximum effect each scene can deliver, not from flashy pyrotechnics but from good dialogue and fine acting and the acting in "Richard Jewell" is as fine as in any Eastwood film. No-one puts a foot wrong but Paul Walter Hauser in the title role, Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates are outstanding.


Hauser is a character actor here given his chance at stardom which he grabs with both hands, (you might remember him as one of the racists in "Blackkklansman"). In lesser hands his character, though real, might have seemed just another cliche but Hauser makes him human while Rockwell as his lawyer and Bates as his mother lift parts that in lesser hands might have fallen flat. I know they are real people but these are traditional roles frequently seen in the movies of the past. Of course, a good deal of their success is down to Eastwood who handles his material with equal degrees of humour and sentiment. This is one of the best films of the year.