Clint East­wood looks for the truth in the Richard Jew­ell trailer

Clint East­wood does things his own way. For instance: film­mak­ers have been attempt­ing in vain to make a movie out of the shock­ing true sto­ry of Richard Jew­ell for the past five years. Along comes East­wood, and sud­den­ly the project’s on the fast track, from a June prin­ci­pal shoot­ing date to a release in December.

The first trail­er for the film sim­ply titled Richard Jew­ell has sur­faced to prove that Eastwood’s real­ly done it, hav­ing com­plet­ed the film in record time. It looks pret­ty pol­ished for a rush job, too, with a hand­ful of flashy per­for­mances and big action set pieces.

Paul Wal­ter Hauser — so won­der­ful­ly dim as a co-con­spir­a­tor in I, Tonya — leads as Richard Jew­ell, a secu­ri­ty guard work­ing for AT&T at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Jew­ell dis­cov­ered a bomb in a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed site and react­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly, warn­ing every­one near­by and evac­u­at­ing the area; law enforce­ment wasn’t so sure, however.

Eastwood’s film focus­es on the tri­al by media that took place in the wake of the inci­dent, as the author­i­ties (rep­re­sent­ed here by Jon Hamm and Olivia Wilde) start­ed look­ing into Jew­ell as a sus­pect in the bomb­ing he foiled, and the pub­lic quick­ly turned on the guy. His life trans­formed into a three-ring cir­cus due to irre­spon­si­ble or even out­right false reportage, giv­ing East­wood the oppor­tu­ni­ty for a broad­side against his favorite peren­ni­al ene­my, the media.

Eastwood’s well-known con­ser­v­a­tive streak runs strong through the trail­er, as big gov­ern­ment threat­ens the lit­tle man in a fash­ion sim­i­lar to that of his recent Sul­ly. So long as East­wood con­tin­ues to draw breath, he’ll keep mak­ing movies, and so long as he’s mak­ing movies, he’ll fight the insti­tu­tion­al pow­ers that be.

Richard Jew­ell comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 13 Decem­ber. A date for the UK has yet to be set.