Reagan (2024)
Directed by: Sean McNamara
Premise: A biopic of Ronald Reagan (Dennis Quaid) from his career as a Hollywood actor through his terms as President of the United States.
What Works: Humor was an important part of Ronald Reagan’s public image and key to his success as a politician. The movie Reagan possesses an equivalent sense of wit. The character is humorous in a way that is usually likable and there is one particularly funny sequence running through the successive leaders of the Soviet Union during Reagan’s administration. Ronald Reagan has become a beloved and legendary figure in conservative politics and this film is useful insofar as it represents the mythification of Reagan.
What Doesn’t: Biographical filmmaking often subscribes to the great man theory and tends toward stories of determined leaders bending history to their will. It’s an idealistic kind of storytelling but hagiography does not even begin to describe Reagan. This movie portrays the fortieth President of the United States as a saint who was without fault. As presented in this film, Reagan always made the right decision and never had doubts or regrets. Regardless of how viewers might think of Reagan’s presidency, this is a shallow and uninteresting portrait. The filmmakers avoid any kind of complexity and they rush through all controversies. While governor of California, Reagan directed the National Guard to break up anti-Vietnam War protests. This is dramatized in Reagan and it’s portrayed as a good thing but the filmmakers never consider why those protesters were there or the consequences of calling in troops to confront them; at least one bystander was killed and over 100 people were seriously injured but none of that is in the movie. The main focus of the film is Ronald Reagan’s fight against communism, first as the President of the Screen Actors Guild and later as the President of the United States. This culminates in a dramatization of Reagan’s 1987 Berlin Wall speech. The filmmakers suggest through juxtaposition that Reagan ended the Cold War through the sheer power of his voice. It’s ridiculous and the moment that is supposed to be the film’s rousing climax is cringe inducingly hokey. The filmmakers constantly succumb to the pitfalls of biographical filmmaking. Most of the picture is a collection of historical anecdotes of Reagan’s life. These moments aren’t connected nor do they serve any dramatic purpose. The film also includes an absurd frame narrative in which a former KGB agent (Jon Voight) narrates Reagan’s life. The voiceover doesn’t tell us anything that’s not already evident by what’s happening on screen. Reagan looks terrible. The sets and costumes are cheap and unconvincing. The production values are matched by Dennis Quaid’s terrible performance. His doesn’t embody Reagan but imitates him and Quaid comes across like he’s in a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Bottom Line: Reagan is terrible filmmaking. It’s badly made and remarkably incurious about its subject. It represents the worst of kind of biographical filmmaking. Instead of bringing us closer to understanding Reagan, it pushes him further away.
Episode: #1021 (November 3, 2024)