Even if you’re not, like me, a sucker for mid-twentieth century American history, then you have to admit that J. Edgar covers a lot of interesting landmarks. Gangsters, civil rights, the Kennedy assassination, the red scare: they’re all featured in Clint Eastwood’s sweeping biopic. Why then, does the film feel so flat? 
On paper the film looks like guaranteed Oscar bait. Firstly there’s tried and tested grit master, professional piercing stare and Academy Award winner Eastwood at the helm. Then there’s teen idol turned serious brow furrower DiCaprio as the ambiguous central figure, in a variety of nice hats and period suits, with sterling support from Naomi Watts, Judi Dench and Arnie Hammer. And finally there’s the subject matter, the life and career of J. Edgar Hoover, the power crazed mummy’s boy who ran the Federal Bureau of Investigation for forty years and left a trail of destruction in his path. Yet J.Edgar has been pretty much snubbed by the academy and it’s easy to see why.
Like real awards contender The Iron Lady, J.Edgar focuses attention on an often unlikable central figure in both his old age and his youth. However, whilst The Iron Lady just about gets away with mangling recent history courtesy of a dazzling performance by Meryl Streep, J.Edgar doesn’t quite have the same central strength. D’Caprio is highly competent, and does his best with an uncompromising script that offers very little light relief, but he lacks the Streep sparkle. It doesn’t help that DiCaprio’s baby face, slightly more weathered now but still with a recognisable pretty boy hangover, makes it difficult to accept him as the aging Hoover.
Another downside is a dry and slightly clunky script. Duncan Lance Black wrote the brilliant screenplay for that other, vastly superior political biopic Milk, but J.Edgar lacks the tragic power and subtly of that film. There are scarcely any moments of light relief, which can be forgivable, but at the same time there is no real emotional connection to compensate for the gloom. The problem is that Hoover and his colleagues, Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), seem to have very little in the way of a private life. Judging by the obsessive way in which Hoover ran the F.B.I, this may be accurate, but it doesn’t make for a very human watch. Most of the time Hoover just comes across as an intolerant and rather nasty old man, whilst the homoerotic subtext between Hoover and his Number Two Tolson is clumsily tacked on. The dinners between the two display moments of such jarring campiness that J.Edgar momentarily seems to transform into Sex and the City for middle aged men.
Whatever you might think of the films, at least Sex and the City was a colourful watch; here Eastwood relentlessly maintains a pallet of stodgy beiges and browns, the visual equivalent of porridge. Given that Hoover had been accused not only of suppressed homosexuality but also cross dressing, a kink highlighted in a slightly odd scene after the death of his oppressive mother, you’d think they’d be space in this film for a bit of a frission. Instead the bland cinematography combined with an inspired script and thoroughly competent performances creates an overall impression of cinematic medicine- it’s doing you good, but are you really having fun?
One glaring oversight that trips J. Edgar up even when it looks like it’s about to hit its stride is the prosthetics. You might think that 70s Doctor Who and kiddies CBBC scareathon Goosebumps had cornered the market in eye-burningly bad prosthetics work, but Eastwood seems to be making a last stab for the prize as the ‘aging process’ renders his actors unrecognisable in the worst possible sense. DiCaprio and Watts struggle to play their characters convincingly over five decades, but it’s poor Armie Hammer who really draws the short straw, ending the film looking more like a rubber love egg with a face, or ET as a potato print, then an old aged pensioner. It sounds petty, but such poor attention to detail is a real deal breaker in a multi-million dollar epic like J. Edgar, particularly when aged versions of the characters feature in a large proportion of the story. Eastwood overlooks this crucial detail and renders scenes of Hoover and Tolson struggling with poor health and co-dependency more laughable than moving. Suspension of disbelief is left in tatters and your left praying for David Fincher to wander in and Benjamin Button this shit up.
That’s not to say there’s nothing to admire here. J. Edgar is completely fine, competent, solid film making. If you’re interested in the period or the man then J. Edgar will keep you occupied for a few hours on a dull January evening. Plus, it has the advantage of not being quite so gut wrenchingly overlong as another of Eastwood’s recent films, the painfully harrowing Changeling. But you expect a little more flair from this renowned veteran, and it’s hard to see this starchy film sticking around long during Oscar season. There’s some really sterling competition out over the next few weeks, and I can’t honestly recommend this thoroughly mediocre piece when there are so many other ways to spend the best part of a tenner. Unless it’s Orange Wednesday. And you’ve already seen The Artist. In which case go ahead.