Film critic says the big lie in 'Richard Jewell' is 'its Trumpian view' of government and the media

According to boxofficemojo.com, Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell” has grossed $5,216,226 since opening in wide release on Dec. 13. So it’s not exactly setting the box office on fire, but you wouldn’t know that from the media meltdowns over the film.

Philadelphia Inquirer national opinion columnist Will Bunch wrote a “nearly 2,000-word screed” complaining about the movie’s “alternate facts” and smearing of reporter Kathy Scruggs.” And now Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman is on deck, saying that the biggest lie in the movie is “its Trumpian view of American institutions.”

Here's my @Variety riff on Clint Eastwood's hypocrisy in making #RichardJewell. https://t.co/CMphxlnEcl

— Owen Gleiberman (@OwenGleiberman) December 14, 2019

Gleiberman starts off by recalling Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair representing Barack Obama — something we’d completely forgotten about, but he certainly didn’t. He then argues, like Bunch, that the film essentially makes journalists look bad in an age where the president is always calling out “fake news.”

He writes:

… what’s far more disturbing about “Richard Jewell” is the film’s larger implication: that in telling the Jewell saga, it’s laying out the hidden truth of how mainstream media and national law enforcement work in America.

For this, it couldn’t be more obvious, is why Eastwood made the film in the first place: to demonize the same forces Donald Trump is now in the business of demonizing. “Richard Jewell” is a drama that piggybacks on Trump’s demagoguery. The movie says that the mainstream media can’t be trusted, and that even the government’s top law enforcement agency will railroad you. And Jewell himself is the pudgy-soul-of-the-heartland, ordinary American white-guy yokel who gets used and abused by these corrupt institutions, with no one to look out for him. The movie treats him as a symbolic Trump supporter. Yet Eastwood, pretending to be a crusader for justice, would never come close to applying the same standard of truth and honor to the institutions that defend Donald Trump.

" undeterred by the challenge of being a female reporter in the south in the 1990s"????? what self serving BS. the South is not now and CERTAINLY Atlanta then was NOT Saudi Arabia. no one cared about genitals, especially in news

— Rani Snark~~ ~ Science Skeptic ? (@MilitaryRosary) December 17, 2019

unfortunately, as this movie demonstrates, no one cared about truth, either. or at least that 'challenged woman in the South' didn't. maybe she felt like she was fact challenged, cause THAT was an issue

— Rani Snark~~ ~ Science Skeptic ? (@MilitaryRosary) December 17, 2019

I lived in Atlanta in 1996. I WATCHED this man destroyed by the AJC and the rest of the media. the EXACT same way the entire media jumped on the Covington Kids. because the media HATES ordinary people. and they don't CARE who they hurt if it sells a paper

— Rani Snark~~ ~ Science Skeptic ? (@MilitaryRosary) December 17, 2019

Awww. Media member mad that a film calls out the media for being the monsters they are. Go cry yourself a river and by the way. Dont take the word of a another media member as fact. In fact, this article proves Eastwood right.

— Sober Rick (@SoberRick) December 14, 2019

And those of us who were alive when it happened saw what the media and FBI did to him. So there’s that!

— Ellen (@elliemaygottasa) December 18, 2019

I'm so glad to see that Hollywood will now be set to the standard of getting every fact correct, as long as those facts are agreeable to the media.

— NotWithAnybody (@NotWithAnybody) December 17, 2019

Another predictable linkage to Trump.

— Marty Davis (@MartyDavis) December 17, 2019

Solid Trump tie-in, journalist.

— Funky Code Medina ✝️ (@spazafraz) December 18, 2019

Kathy Scruggs is the REAL victim here? What a garbage take.

— dfinney (@dfinney16) December 17, 2019

There's also another 'big lie' in that movie…
Scruggs never shed any tears at a press conference.
Cover THAT.

— ??? Snarky Bear ??? (@michaelsnarky) December 18, 2019

If this movie made liberals look good, you'd be for it. But, since it makes the liberal media look bad, you hate it.

— E. Perez (@replatina9) December 17, 2019

“…bigger symbolic lie: that the media and the government are in bed with each other.” Hilarious that you think this is a lie.

— Cory Kapadia (@CoryKapadia) December 15, 2019

Worlds smallest fiddle

— SW2 (@FireForEffect2) December 18, 2019

Won’t somebody think of the journalists?

— Eli (@UnrealElijah) December 18, 2019

People who treat Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock as arbiters of biblical truth very angry about fictionalized portrayal of real media smearing https://t.co/UpPqqu1KGY

— x-Anthony Bialy (@AnthonyBialy) December 17, 2019

I saw Richard Jewell and get Gleiberman's objections, which are not unfair.

However, it's a) still a very good film and b) distortion of facts for thematic reasons never seems to be an issue when the film is liberal. This is what viewers on the right are constantly exposed to. https://t.co/FaY2c7ZwVu

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) December 17, 2019

That’s a load of shit, Owen. A poor argument presented in pedestrian, boring, fashion.

Do better, or stick completely to movies and leave politics for the grown ups.

— PeteInJerseyJr (@PeteSuspendo) December 18, 2019

Boy are you pathetic.

— M M (@smartmuffin) December 18, 2019

Jewell saved a lot of lives

thats more than you’ll ever do

— ThunderB, DistortedIntensityEffect (@ThunderB) December 17, 2019

Related:

'It's such balderdash'! Jay Caruso shreds 'nearly 2,000-word screed' complaining that Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell is mean to journalists https://t.co/v0Ev9dkTnV

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 12, 2019