Tagged: Leonardo DiCaprio

J. Edgar Hoover has been demonized for his many excesses and lapses during his distinguished career as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He seemingly turned a blind eye to organized crime after Prohibition ended, focusing instead on gaining information to use as leverage against political rivals and rooting out Communism long after it stopped being a domestic threat. What few appreciate is that he was the figure to move law enforcement from a collection of theories to a disciplined, trained force that embraced forensics and dogged detective work to build cases against their suspects.

Clint Eastwood took on an examination of this complex figure in J. Edgar, a deeply flawed film that was released in the fall and is out now on disc from Warner Home Video. The movie is constantly shifting from Hoover’s early days as a fed to the 1960s and the time frame jumps proved jarring as you needed a snippet of dialogue or visual clue to figure out if it was 1932, 1963 or 1968. The screenplay, from Dustin Lance Black, bookends the man’s career but we the audience are left wondering what happened between the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Surely, Hoover and the FBI did something of note during this era but there’s not a single clue. (more…)