Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang
Perhaps the most reprehensible lingering disgrace in the ordeal suffered by Richard Jewell — during a lengthy nightmare laden with hourly indignities — is the fact that, to this day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution maintains that it behaved responsibly.
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| Centennial Park security officer Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser, center) points law enforcement officers to a suspicious-looking backpack that has been abandoned beneath a bench near the sound-and-light tower adjacent to the performance stage, where Jack Mack and the Heart Attack are entertaining thousands of fans. |
To borrow a phrase from the younger generation, I call BS.
Jewell deserves to be remembered solely as the hero who, while working as a security guard at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, discovered a bomb-laden backpack and helped evacuate the crowded area before it exploded. He undoubtedly saved many, many lives.
Instead, he’s more likely remembered as the hapless individual who, three days later, was identified as the probable suspect who planted the bomb, thanks to an overzealous FBI investigation, inflammatory “reporting” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the hundreds of media outlets that subsequently fanned the flames.
Despite being cleared after an 88-day siege by media and all manner of law enforcement, Jewell undoubtedly remained a question mark in the minds of many, particularly since nobody initially was arrested for the heinous crime. It’s easy to imagine the rumor-mongering: “Maybe he did do it, but the FBI just didn’t have enough evidence…”
Even when Eric Rudolph confessed to being the bomber after being arrested in 2003, there was no way to wholly eradicate the avalanche of accusatory publicity that had buried Jewell and his equally hapless mother for 88 days. Retractions and “fresh truth” rarely have the impact of three months’ worth of screaming headlines.
Director Clint Eastwood and scripter Billy Ray — adapting Marie Brenner’s mesmerizing profile of Jewell, in the February 1997 Vanity Fair — have done their best to restore his honor, in a compelling drama fueled by powerhouse performances from Paul Walter Hauser and Kathy Bates, as Richard and his mother, Bobi. The result is a terrifying cautionary tale about the fragility of one’s place in society, and the ease with which an ordinary life can be ruined by authority and bad publicity.
Jewell’s ordeal truly is straight out of Kafka.
