The Front Runner movie review (2019) | Little White Lies

The Front Runner

09 Jan 2019 / Released: 11 Jan 2019

Words by Adam Nayman

Directed by Jason Reitman

Starring Hugh Jackman, JK Simmons, and Vera Farmiga

A man in a suit speaking into a microphone, surrounded by a crowd, in front of a Greenpeace banner.
A man in a suit speaking into a microphone, surrounded by a crowd, in front of a Greenpeace banner.
2

Anticipation.

Who was Gary Hart again?

2

Enjoyment.

If I wanted to watch All the President’s Men, I’d watch All the President’s Men.

2

In Retrospect.

Move along, nothing to see here.

If noth­ing else, this tawdry polit­i­cal dra­ma proves that Jason Reit­man is no Steven Spielberg.

The thing about most movies of the moment” is that they aren’t built to last. What, for instance, is the major util­i­ty of Jason Reitman’s The Front Run­ner as we move on from the dis­mal present to what­ev­er blast­ed hellscape awaits this year (and how­ev­er many remain after that)?

Osten­si­bly, a film lever­ag­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the press to hold pow­er­ful men to account against the con­se­quences of con­flat­ing the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal should be time­less, but Reit­man – a shrewd zeit­geist surfer, if noth­ing else – clear­ly designed his Gary Hart docu­d­ra­ma for present-tense intrigue. That’s why its major themes can be eas­i­ly reduced to hash­tag-sized talk­ing points: #Fak­e­News, #Grab­Her­ByThe­P­ussy and #MeToo.

In this attempt to reverse-engi­neer res­o­nance, The Front Run­ner resem­bles Steven Spielberg’s 2017 news­room pro­ce­dur­al The Post, to the point where both films fea­ture scenery-chew­ing actors as that paper’s leg­endary edi­tor Ben Bradlee. In lieu of Tom Han­ks, Reit­man gives us a hopped-up Alfred Moli­na, cyn­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fy­ing the deci­sion to lead with tabloid-style take­downs of Hart (Hugh Jack­man) tied to sex­u­al extracur­ric­u­lars, all at a time when the Col­orado gov­er­nor is with­in spit­ting dis­tance of the Presidency.

The script’s impli­ca­tion is that a poten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tive pro­gres­sive was cut down by a jour­nal­is­tic estab­lish­ment pres­sured to low­er its own stan­dards from with­in, and that the Hart imbroglio – which cost the well-liked politi­cian the Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship, his career, and his dig­ni­ty – was the pri­mal scene of debased 21st cen­tu­ry mass media, and pos­si­bly even the ascen­dance of right-wing suprema­cy in America.

Cred­it to Reit­man for attempt­ing some­thing so lofti­ly ambi­tious, but what’s decent about The Front Run­ner – the wise­crack­ing hum of the news room scenes and its drably real­is­tic colour palette – are at best hand-me-downs from bet­ter films made in the 1970s, while its flaws belong recog­nis­ably to the film­mak­er and his con­gen­i­tal con­fu­sion of glib­ness for profundity.

As in Thank You for Smok­ing and Up in the Air, Reit­man can’t help but sen­ti­men­talise his avatar of put-upon white male author­i­ty, and Jack­man – one year removed from air­brush­ing PT Bar­num in The Great­est Show­man – leans into the pity par­ty, offer­ing only the most mil­que­toast charisma.

There are oth­er, big­ger prob­lems as well. The fab­ri­ca­tion out of whole cloth of a fatal­ly ide­al­is­tic African-Amer­i­can beat reporter (Mamoudou Athie) to low­er the boom on Hart plays hor­ren­dous­ly, as does the insis­tence on paint­ing Hart’s lover Don­na Rice (Sarah Pax­ton) as a sym­bol­ic vic­tim and then show­ing zero inter­est in the fall­out of the whole affair on her life.

As a way of intro­duc­ing a younger audi­ence to a most­ly for­got­ten but admit­ted­ly sig­nif­i­cant sex scan­dal, The Front Run­ner may have its uses, but its com­mer­cial fail­ure in the US sug­gests that it’ll take some­thing con­sid­er­ably sharp­er and more dis­tinc­tive to pen­e­trate such a grind­ing news cycle. Any­body who may have been look­ing for­ward to this movie has prob­a­bly for­got­ten that it’s already come and gone: time’s up.

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