J. Edgar Review

J. Edgar: B+ by MattH306
A very good biopic spanning the career of a fascinating individual.

Enjoyed It by PinkKitty77
If you are looking for special effects, lots of action or edge of your seat drama this movie is not for you. It is a thinking person's film and most likely because it is methodical in nature, if you are from the new age of constant over stimulation you will be dissapointed. It was really an in depth character study of a man that was brilliant gone radical and over zealous about all the wrong things. It reveals all his secrets and weaknesses, he got his karma, because basically he framed and revealed everyone else's character flaws while hiding his own. Only difference was they were usually in the height of power, while he has been long dead. The acting was great and over all the movie is a great bio-documentary for the old saying "Ultimate power ultimately corrupts." Definitely not for children, as they would not be able to relate and it would move way too slow for them. I really enjoyed it but DeCaprio's makeup for the older J. Edgar bothered me, looked too phoney.

J. Edgar is good but not great by ed_campbell
This is a slow-paced film shot in a moody, dim lighting. Leonardo DiCaprio does a great job with Hoover at the end of his life - you forget there's a much younger man inside. But for most of the film, DiCaprio's Hoover is shallow and without joy, an obsessive paranoid too long in the job, who uses the FBI's power to collect secret files and then blackmails whoever displeases him. But we never get the juicy details! Director Eastwood has chosen to focus Hoover's emotional energy more on his love interest with Agent Tolson and his distorted relationship with his mother, and less on, say, how the FBI went after gangsters during Prohibition. You know, some action!! The guy who plays Tolson does a terrific job, but I don't get much entertainment from guy-guy love relationships. And Tolson's makeup as an old man is truly weird... frightening even. So, had there been more roaring Packards and G-men with Tommy guns, more focus on the FBI itself, I would have liked J Edgar more.

J Edgar by janelaf
He was one of the most interesting men of the 20th. century. I happen to be old enough to remember Hoover & this movie did not tell his story. It was way to politically correct.

Excellent acting by Samaster
Trash acting like Twilight may make some bucks, but thank God our country still has some actors that really take acting seriously like Leonardo. Even if I don't like the subject in any of his films, there is true acting that most American actors have forgotten and instead they are just personalities. Great acting!!!

J. Edgar by Shir-dog
I was very disappointed with this movie. I was expecting some real insights into one of the major American personalities of the 20th century, but got a whitewashed drama (?) that was scant on the details of this most interesting character. There were brief references to Hoover's secret files, but nothing was revealed. There were allusions to wiretaps of JFK, but no details. There was talk about Hoover's more-than-quirky personality traits, but nothing definitive. It appears as if Eastwood shied away from any of the real controversy that existed around Hoover during his life and continued after his death. The acting was OK, but the over-abudance of makeup on particularly Hammer was a distraction. In this case, the reality of this movie did not live up to the hype.

Misdirection in many ways by poetrydoctor
This film is acceptable when it should, instead, be exceptional. Leonardo Dicaprio does a fine job acting. However, from what we now know, as a matter of historical fact, about J. Edgar, the film should have made a more politically and socially important statement. Yes, the film, in many ways, damns the man, as well he should be damned, but alas, as much as anything it dwells on his closet homosexuality. If, by revealing that side of Hoover, Clint Eastwood thinks people will think less of him, than Eastwood has picked a cheap way to show what a scoundrel and phony Hoover was. It's not that he loved his mother too much or had a secret homosexual past. Pity for him that he lived in a time when neither his mother nor society would allow him to be the homosexual man he needed to be. What the film should have spent its time on, and what it instead a backed away from, was a portrarit of a power-hungry and prejudice man who did tremendous damage to the country for decades and decades.

Dicaprio Was A Fantastic J. Edgar Hoover by lovethemovies1955
Fascinating lesson about the beginning of modern crime techniques. So much there I didn't know, including J Edgars Hoovers relationship with his top executive! What a paranoid, troubled man. Go, it is worth it. The movie is slow in pace but the beautiful cinematography and acting makes it compelling.

J. Edgar by vladisha
this movie comes off like the story of the creation of the FBI and how J. Edgar ran it but in reality is a story of a homosexual relationship between two men. Very dissappointed in being misled by the previews. Wasted my money

Leo's performance makes it by lindarein
In aiming for a balanced portrait of Hoover rather than delivering the hatchet job most people would expect, Eastwood has made a good if not great film. It covers a lot of ground historically, but doesn't dig very deep. One is left to draw one's own conclusions. DiCaprio is terrific as Hoover from youth to old age, and this has to count as perhaps his most fully realized performance to date. The screenplay fails to develop any of the other characters, and Eastwood is also to blame for casting choices and direction. As Edgar's mother, Judi Dench, pushing 80 and looking it, is too old in most of her scenes with Edgar, and her American accent is dreadful. Armie Hammer is out of his depth as Tolson, and his ghastly old-age makeup makes him look like an escapee from the set of The Walking Dead. Naomi Watts' character of the loyal secretary is never explored, which is luxury casting wasted. In sum, an A for Leo, a B for Eastwood.