Richard Jew­ell

In Atlanta’s Cen­ten­ni­al Park, a roar ris­es from the crowd as they recog­nise the down­beat of the ​‘Macare­na’. Dressed in jorts and wide-striped shirts, Olympics fans move in uni­son to the rhythm of the summer’s oth­er sen­sa­tion. The song ends; they chant: ​“U! S! A! U! S! A!”

It’s July, 1996, the mid­point of the End of His­to­ry. Pres­i­dent Clinton’s rela­tion­ship with Mon­i­ca Lewin­sky is not yet pub­lic knowl­edge, and Sur­vivor is not yet on screens, let alone YouTube – nor­mal peo­ple are only ever on prime­time by acci­dent, on COPS or America’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos.

Amid all this fly­over com­pla­cen­cy, Richard Jew­ell (Paul Wal­ter Hauser) is try­ing to do his job, despite his diar­rhoea. He takes being a rent-a-cop seri­ous­ly – it’s ​“still law enforce­ment,” like his stint in cam­pus secu­ri­ty, from which he was fired for too zeal­ous­ly polic­ing the dorms. (He calls the under­grads ​“son,” despite his own pinch­able pink chub­by cheeks.) Jew­ell lives with his moth­er (Kathy Bates) and speaks with a stam­mer­ing for­mal­i­ty – he’s the kind of per­son who gets inter­rupt­ed by the oper­a­tor when he dials direc­to­ry assistance.

Hauser is as fun­ny as he was in I, Tonya, in that same molasses-thick way, but there’s a bor­der of pathos around him here, just as in this film – like in so many from this late stage of Clint Eastwood’s career – car­pet­ed rooms often appear under­lit, so that dark­ness seeps into the edge of the frame.

When Jew­ell sees some­thing, says some­thing, and pre­vents untold addi­tion­al casu­al­ties from the det­o­na­tion of pipe bombs plant­ed at Cen­ten­ni­al Park, he gets what he thinks he wants: for NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw to say his name on tele­vi­sion. He gets to be some­body; as with the every­man heroes of The 15:17 to Paris, the moment he has shaped his life to meet actu­al­ly arrives. And then, like Sul­ly​’s Ches­ley Sul­len­berg­er, he is hunt­ed by the spot­light: pro­filed by the FBI as a like­ly lone-wolf glo­ry-hound bomber, and pur­sued by the Furies of the press.

Lead­ing the charge is Olivia Wilde, in a glint­ing-eyed, camp-clas­sic turn as real-life Atlanta Jour­nal-Con­sti­tu­tion reporter Kathy Scrug­gs, whose car­niv­o­rous nose for a sto­ry leads her to the feds’ sus­pi­cions. Pre-release, crit­ics decried East­wood for show­ing Scrug­gs sleep­ing with her Bureau con­tact (Jon Hamm) in exchange for infor­ma­tion, per­haps an over­lit­er­al read­ing of a scene both actors play as fore­play: she wants to fuck, and he wants to tell, because they’re both so bored and con­temp­tu­ous of oth­er people.

The hate­ful car­i­ca­ture of Scrug­gs is the con­cen­trat­ed essence of a para­noia about a big world – the media, the gov­ern­ment, women – in which Richard Jew­ell is not at home, a world that will eat him alive. What Richard expe­ri­ences is less the fear of being wrong­ly accused than the shame of being sub­ject to the kind of pub­lic scruti­ny usu­al­ly reserved for the Clin­tons and the Brokaws, not for an obese los­er with an embar­rass­ing biography.

At a press con­fer­ence, Richard’s mom­my begs for an end to the gov­ern­ment per­se­cu­tion and media cir­cus, lift­ing up a prayer­ful, ​“Please, Mr Pres­i­dent…”. It’s a plea to the avatar of ​’90s neolib­er­al con­sen­sus, to par­al­lel her son’s syco­phan­tic def­er­ence to the law enforce­ment ran­sack­ing their home.