Clint Eastwood's cinema doesn't usually leave you indifferent. Either because of the unquestionable brilliance of some of his titles or by the nationalist and conservative tufo who dismiss a handful of his latest feature films. And at 89 he has done it again. Eastwood has opted for another story about an American hero with high doses of homeland and controversy in the backpack. Richard Jewell was a standing ovation at its premiere at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles, and at the same time sticks by the accusations made against the media of the time.

His 37th job as director tells the story of the security guard who alerted the police about the bomb package that ended up exploding during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. His action helped prevent a large-scale massacre, although he was later accused of Having been the man behind the attack.

In another portrait of the dark side of an American hero, Eastwood encumbles a forgotten character and describes the process of harassment and demolition against Jewell by government authorities and the media "as a great American tragedy."

So much dent in doing that to beat the fourth power of the time, which suggests that Kathy Scruggs, one of the journalists of The Atlanta Journal-Constitutional, interpreted by Olivia Wilde, slept with an FBI agent in exchange for Information about the case. It was that journalist who uncovered the story about Jewel as suspected of being the author of the attack.

It is a part of the script that has scolded the director of the newspaper in Atlanta and that he himself has called into question. "There has never been any evidence that that was the way Kathy got the story," Kevin Riley told The Hollywood Reporter . "It's something that has come out of nowhere."

Critics have also underlined Eastwood's deliberate attempt to demonize the press and turn it into an inhuman plague that tried to misrepresent the facts and end the reputation of a simple man. The same director said in a press conference after the premiere that "everyone went for him and I realized how it happened."

Eastwood paints the journalist played by Wilde as an unscrupulous , impertinent character who does not verify anything he publishes, very much in line with the campaign that Donald Trump has been starring since he assumed the presidency of the United States in 2016. The president has become to the press in his main enemy.

For the rest, Richard Jewell is the story of a poor devil who, trying to do something heroic, ends up in a mess of noses, the kind of title that can connect with a broad base of spectators in the US for being focused on a southern redneck , lover of God, his mother and pistols. The film also arrives at the same time as other Eastwood films that attracted American conservative audiences and gave a fabulous box office result, such as Sully and The Sniper.

At the moment, in Hollywood it is already on the list of futures for the awards season, a tape based on a screenplay by Billy Ray on an article published by Vanity Fair and a new book on the case, with a cast in which Jon is Hamm, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bayes and Paul Walter Houser in the role of Jewel. It will continue to generate headlines, for sure.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • movie theater
  • culture

CineLorene Scafaria: "Capitalism criminalizes women"

The hit of 'Terminator: dark destiny' at the box office complicates the future of the franchise

CinemaThe share of Catalan cinema falls to its historical minimum