Review: A worshipful biopic of the 40th president, 'Reagan' is historical hooey — and a slog too
There’s political idolatry, and then there’s the canonization in movie's clothing that is Sean McNamara’s faith-tinged bio-epic “Reagan,” which follows its subject, played by Dennis Quaid, from Ronnie’s Hollywood days through his two terms as the 40th president.
Quaid’s a reliably muscular actor who deserves meaty roles. But here he’s just an imitation puppet, the high-wattage shell masking a hollow portrait tailor-made for religious conservatives with a thin grasp of history and no tolerance for nuance. If you can imagine someone watching the classic “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Phil Hartman portraying Reagan as a geopolitical brainiac fronting as a bumbling optimist and taking it as gospel, you’ll have some idea of how “Reagan” comes off.
Of course, that legendary bit played on wide skepticism that our folksy prez played dumb with the Iran-Contra scandal, hence its hilarious picture of Reagan as a criminal mastermind. Here, though, with every ham-fisted scene of myth-mired heroism, McNamara and screenwriter Howard Klausner seek veneration for the Man Who Ended Communism: the guy who’d had the reds in his sights for decades; the sincere smile that hid a fierce warrior; the Christian whose perfect long game — star to Screen Actors Guild head to FBI informant to governor to world leader making folksy quips — inevitably shattered the godless Soviet Union.
Such conveniently selective determinism — leaving out Russia’s self-destruction, the will of oppressed people in other countries, and how Reagan broke his own nation too — would be historical hooey without the added bizarreness of this movie’s present-day narrative device: a crusty old Soviet spy called Viktor (Jon Voight) looking back. To a green young Russian agent, he tells with sinister admiration the story of his nemesis the Crusader — also the name of the adoring Reagan biography the film draws from. Viktor knew all along that this American was the only true threat the West ever produced.
It’s a story of a good guy facing down Hollywood Commies, showing 1960s campus protesters a thing or two, and with a few phrases bringing a vicious superpower to its knees. But also a story of doing TV ads in the ’50s, courting an actress (poor, poor Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy) and buying a ranch in Santa Ynez. Admittedly arcane topics for a pair of Russian spooks. Choose well those framing devices, aspiring screenwriters.
With its forced sweep, ridiculous dialogue and disinterest in interiority, “Reagan” is such a breathless, shoddily assembled timeline of big moments and notable absences that when things slow down a tad for the Gorbachev (Olek Krupa) talks, you ache for the smarter, more complex movie about the Cold War’s end that this version — built around binary moments amounting to “He can’t!” “But he did!” — won’t even envision.
No opportunity to scrub fault slips past McNamara, for whom the AIDS crisis is only worthy of lumping into an ’80s music video-style montage of annoying, context-less grievances that (oh no!) might hurt Reagan’s reelection chances, which as dramatized here, believe it or not, are iffy. “Let Ronnie be Ronnie!” Nancy screams to her husband’s campaign staff. One applause-worthy quip later at the Mondale debate, he secures 49 states. What a comeback! Viktor sounds especially crestfallen. No word about how a decimated LGBTQ community may have felt.
That cloyingly waxy shine goes all the way past the credits too, when it follows up on a detail from Reagan’s house stay during the Geneva Summit: While he was using his host’s son’s bedroom, the boy’s goldfish died. That the president of the United States left behind a note of apology to the kid is a cute story, granted, even if it’s treated as an act of above-and-beyond integrity, of the “Mr. Gorbachev can WAIT!” variety. But McNamara needs exoneration, tacking on post-credits the boy’s written response, declaring his VIP guest innocent of pet-care negligence. Fish die — no big! A fitting coda to a childish slog of hero worship.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
