‘Richard Jewell’: Stopping ’96 Olympics bomb put do-gooder in the crosshairs of FBI, media
By Tom Meek
In talking with a friend about “Two Popes,” the excellently acted and well-shot papal bore-fest, one point that came up about films dealing with “true events” was that flawed characters and quirky happenings on the fringe often made for a more compelling narrative. Take “Sully” (2016) or “I, Tonya” (2017). The former did an end run around on Miracle on the Hudson pilot Chesley Sullenberger, chronicling the hero’s personal hell while being investigated and under suspicion by the Federal Aviation Administration, while the latter peeled back the mask of villainy on the scorned figure skater for her husband’s misguided hit on a publicly adored rival.
Clint Eastwood directed “Sully” and Paul Walter Hauser played one of the goons who took a lead pipe to Nancy Kerrigan’s knee in “I, Tonya,” so it’s fitting that the two pair up for “Richard Jewell,” about the surreal ordeal surrounding the portly security guard of the title, once under investigation for a bombing in Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Nicely, the story bookends with the relationship between Jewell (Hauser) and Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), a snippy, dismissive lapdog of an attorney. It’s at his law firm that we first meet Jewell as a mail delivery clerk, before he moves on to pursuing his dream of being a law enforcement officer and ends up at Centennial Park.
Up to the bombing – which comes midway through – the character illustration of Jewell is quite something. Sure he’s got the countenance of a rube, lives at home with mom (Kathy Bates, perfectly understated) and has buddies with mullets who look like white supremacists, but his expressed desire to serve and protect comes off as genuine. It’s hard to fault a man with ambitions – that is, until you learn that as a college campus security officer, Jewell’s something of an overreaching megalomaniac, pulling over students on the highway outside campus when suspected of drinking and driving and barging in for dorm room searches. At once, you pity Jewell and see the seeds of George Zimmerman. Continue reading
At its core “Deepwater” is a disaster flick, and a nail-biter to boot, but much of what propels it are the human stories, the selfless actions of those caught in the way of harm and the shocking arrogance unfurled by British Petroleum higher-ups wanting to turn a fast buck. The film hangs on two caught at the epicenter of the ordeal: Kurt Russell’s rig commander, Jimmy Harrell, and Mark Wahlberg’s second-in-command, Mike Williams. These are two actors who in recent outings – “The Hateful Eight” and “Lone Survivor” – were left bloodied and beaten, and worse, which in hindsight must have been preparation for what would come: asphyxiation by gushing oil, shrapnel whizzing at every turn and a few ungainly forays into parkour as one incinerating part of the rig lists and crashes downward; and if you think the sea a good exit, it’s nothing but a pool of fire for as far as one can see. 
“Million Dollar Baby” and “Invictus” were two such inwardly wound gems, and Eastwood’s latest, “Sully,” marks another fully palpable portrait of human determination that’s more interested in the human condition and compassion than heroics. Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty of heroics in “Sully.” After all, the film is branded after the man who executed the “Miracle on the Hudson”; if you were asleep in 2009 in the wake of the economic meltdown, when good news was hard to come by, that was when Sully (aka Chesley Sullenberger) gave the nation something to cheer about, putting down a badly damaged jet on the Hudson River, saving the 155 lives aboard and avoiding incalculable collateral damage should a return to LaGuardia fail. 
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