Tss5078 Clint Eastwood's films are extremely historically accurate. The academy and critics love his work and especially the way he manages to get the best out of his leading roles. That being said, his films also tend to be extremely long and very dry, J. Edgar was no different. J. Edgar Hoover was the man who started the FBI. He is the man solely responsible for creating a fingerprint database, cataloging and investigating forensic evidence at crime scenes, and he was also completely paranoid and spied on just about everyone he could. It was sad to see just how lonely, narrow minded, and repressed this man was his whole life. He was so narrowly focused his entire life, that he didn't seem to ever enjoy anything besides his work. As for the film, Leonardo DiCaprio gives another stunning performance, one that rivals all his other work. People who worked with Hoover, in his later years, say that DiCaprio was so good that it was like seeing Hoover himself back in charge. When he was first starting out, people thought DiCaprio was just another pretty face, who would do films like the Beach his entire career, but they couldn't be more wrong. He has emerged as one of the best leading men in all of Hollywood and J. Edgar is a prime example of this. You can't have a DiCaprio greatest hits compilation without including this performance, it really was that good. I learned a lot from this film and the performances were truly fantastic in every sense of the word. How DiCaprio's performance didn't get nominated for an Academy Awards is beyond me and does lend some credence to the theory that the Academy is bias towards him. As for the rest of the film, it's long, very long and parts of it just don't move at all. You'll learn a lot and from a historic stand point, I think this is one of those film everyone should see, but at times it's not easy to sit through. Don't expect much in the way of action, comic relief, or deviation. It's just a lot of vintage Eastwood, DiCaprio, and criminal justice history.

Grumpy I saw this film (finally) on Netflix and I found myself glued to the screen for two and a half hours--not entertained, exactly, but fascinated by the way that so many talented people could produce something so "not good." This movie is not really good. It's acceptable, but not special enough to deserve more than a six out of 10, and that's including two stars for the script, which was clever and concise, and that's high praise for a movie script.The problem with the movie wasn't the cast or the script, it was the director. This film needed a firm hand on the wheel but there was no such guidance. It just drifts off message and runs into the rocks. It reminded me of "Hoffa," which also featured a weird biography of a famous (infamous?) character, that was fascinating because it was so weird. "J. Edgar" desperately needed to show us something about, well, J. Edgar. It needed to demonstrate just how he rationalized his crimes and emphasized his heroism. I think the script originally attempted to do that--to show a tortured soul coming to grips with the distance between his reach and his grasp, between his actions and his motives, but the execution is off. We needed to have a pause or two in the action, where "Speedy" Hoover would slow down, or even stop, the camera could give DiCaprio an opportunity to convey the internal hurricane that could result in the man like J.Edgar Hoover. But Clint Eastwood's direction never takes a break and we speed along like a cheap tour bus of Famous Homes of Washington--never pausing to take a breath and never having the chance to imagine what it must have been like to be one of the most famous men on Earth and, also, one of the most secret.This movie was a missed opportunity. Clint Eastwood seems to produce some mighty fine motion pictures when horses, horsepower and shooting and punching are on the menu. When the evil that men do is quietly done by those wearing spiffy suits and ties, he's out of his depth. This film suffers from too many answers and not enough questions. To understand a man like Hoover, a few good questions go much further than all the bogus "answers" in the world. Somebody, at some time, during the filming of this should have made the "too on the nose" gesture and told Clint not to be so literal.

Leofwine_draca A workable biopic of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, featuring strong direction from Clint Eastwood and a good leading performance from the dependable Leonardo DiCaprio. J. EDGAR isn't my favourite of Eastwood's movies because it does feel very slow and stately and it lacks the kind of depth present in some of his other films. However, it's much better than the overrated MILLION DOLLAR BABY, and about on par with THE CHANGELING.The film is told in flashback for the most part, and given Hoover's lengthy career, there's plenty of material to cover. We get involved in kidnappings, political wranglings, the Kennedy family, plus Hoover's own private relationships with his secretary, friend, and mother. J. EDGAR isn't a showy film at all, as it remains subtle and subdued throughout, and the actors in support like Naomi Watts barely register on the viewer's attention.While I didn't have the problems with the quality of the make-up that other reviewers on here did, I do take issues with the darker-than-dark cinematography. Eastwood seems to be going out of his way to make the whole thing as dark and gloomy as possible, which I always find makes for a faintly depressing movie. What happened to films being filled with sun and colour?

Kirpianuscus a great director. a delicate subject. and a real good work. because it is a film about power- its price, its limits- more than a film about Hoover. it is an exercise of honesty about a man who creates and lead and transforms America. and the courage and subtle science to not present a statue but a vulnerable man, with obscure aspects of life, with desire to impose rules , the mixture of patriotic attitude and egocentric acts, the force who transforms people and events, the images of childhood as windows to the single man, the strange definition of family and the purpose who build a career, Leonardo Di Caprio in one of his splendid roles, all represents arguments for admire Eastwood's work.