Clint Eastwood
Richard Jewell

There is a flaw. In the film, journalist Kathy Scruggs trades information for sex. And those at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution didn't take it well, to put it mildly. But in the end, this blemish in Billy Ray's screenplay further illuminates the crux of the matter: we are all (journalists, storytellers, directors) in love with a story that we take for granted, an idea we don't want to shake off, a rough portrait we've created and believe infallible. The violence of information that can destroy lives, even in its verification process. Just like Heisenberg, by measuring the phenomenon, you alter it.

Portraying the journalist as a news thief hitting below the belt, Eastwood and Ray do nothing but strengthen and make more evident the film's meaning: in this ultra-media world, what matters is not so much the truth, but a narrative that is functional and believable enough. Clint makes the mistake he stigmatizes, and this tells us how endemic that mistake is in today's world we live in. It's everywhere, we see it every day with the media trials that unfold on TV and in newspapers. Who cares about the lives of those designated guilty?

Like pieces of a ruthless mosaic, Blondie's films complement and engage in full organic dialogue. If The Mule evolved from Gran Torino, this is a bit of the perspective inversion of The Mule: there was the unsuspected guilty one and therefore “innocent” for everyone, here there is the highly suspect innocent and therefore “guilty.” But there is also a lot of Sully, though in a less subtle and technical form, more media-driven and farcical. An unfounded trial takes place at the expense of Richard and Mama Bobi, barricaded in their home. It's a degenerated Sully.

And there is much more, like the power dynamics between the press and law enforcement. Newspapers hang on every word from the FBI, but when they come out with headlines, they impose an additional duty on the authority to confirm what is written, because people seem to like that idea. It becomes clear that the analytical path is never neutral, but aimed at the constant confirmation of a preconceived opinion.

In this biased system, the crystalline transparency and trust of the overweight protagonist appear anachronistic. Out of time. Even the defense attorney (a skillful Sam Rockwell) uses the methods and categories of the FBI and newspapers, not having full faith in the overwhelming force of the truth, knowing that a trend in public opinion can count more than the shortcomings of the thesis. A nod to the themes of Polanski's J'accuse. Truth is a troubled path, full of pitfalls, a risky delivery.

So many contents and not much vision, because the affair does not allow much of it. There's a bit of the sentiment missing from the films in which Clint also acts. That bitter vision of his filters less through actor-mediums. Only Clint does justice to Clint. The roundness of Paul Walter Hauser is not as expressive as the wrinkles of the old director. Even if the sentiment is equally in tune in moral terms.

Appreciate the filmmaker's total disregard in choosing a not very alluring subject for the general public. An obese protagonist, not likable, meticulous, and awkward. Antagonists that are fundamentally us, are the institutional figures we tend to trust (or perhaps tended to): law enforcement, the press. Us.

A general malaise emerges for the inevitability of pain that the system brings with it: as viewers and citizens, we feel victims and perpetrators, unconscious cogs in a perverse mechanism. Just as newspapers cannot help but report news, authorities cannot help but investigate, we cannot help but be indignant on command and then do a complete turnaround, as we are at the mercy of words that weigh and hurt. They mortify.