Despite being a fan of Reitman's work (Up in the Air, Thank You for Smoking), this one didn't land home for me. I know why he wanted to make this movie, the link to the current president (Trump at this moment of writing in 2019) and what character he is as a leader. The one thing they have in common is that they may, or may not, have commited adultery and if that should be taken into account whether or not they are fit to command the oval office. The media prevented Hart from achieving this, but 30 years later Trump managed anyway, despite being a more nefarious character than Hart. It is a clear vision that in only a couple of decades, things can change dramatically.
I've established that I know what he wanted to do. But it did not land. It has a very strong performance by Jackman and Farmiga is passable. It just focusses and zooms in on the wrong things. The story feels like an uphill climb, but the sights up there are not worth the trouble of the journey. I don't feel like I got to know the man Gary Hart, or his family. I didn't feel how big the impact actually was on his campaign and family, the movie only showed it to me.
The only reason it got 6 points is of Jackman's performance, the line it tries to draw with current events and the fact that it was made with technology that was only available in the eighties. Besides that? Meh.
Review by Stephen CampbellBlockedParent2022-10-15T15:42:08Z
Competently made but barely scratches the thematic surface
Based on the non-fiction book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid (2014) by Matt Bai, written for the screen by Bai, Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking; Juno; Tully) , and Jay Carson (Hilary Clinton's former press secretary), and directed by Reitman, The Front Runner tells the story of Colorado senator Gary Hart's doomed 1988 presidential campaign. The most likely candidate to win the Democratic nomination, Hart's reputation was shattered when a Miami Herald story accused him of an extramarital affair, and only three weeks into his campaign, he withdrew from the race. The film presents the events of those weeks as a seismic turning-point; when political journalism and tabloid sensationalism irrevocably fused, when private scandal became just as important to the American public as political acumen, perhaps even moreso. Aspiring to the kind of multi-character canvas of Robert Altman or early Paul Thomas Anderson, The Front Runner recalls Altman's 1988 miniseries, Tanner '88. However, it spreads itself far too thin, trying to take on the perspective of a plethora of characters, yet telling us very little about any of them, least of all Hart himself. And in the end, it fails to work as either a darkly satirical examination of the Hart scandal, or as a socio-political critique of the current constitutional environment in the US.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/Cpull