Movies

Clint Eastwood set himself a hard task from the outset by picking to make a biopic about a notoriously slippery figure of American history: the founder of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. While the 81-year-old director's latest effort is definitely no Gran Torino or Million Dollar Baby, it's still a compelling yarn about a deeply flawed and conflicted individual.

Like The Iron Lady recently, we meet the subject in old age at a time of political and personal reflection. John Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) wants to set the record straight on his achievements, from establishing the FBI in 1935 to pioneering a rigorous fingerprinting database to catch criminals, to his controversial measures of surveillance on political dissidents and politicians themselves.

Early on it becomes clear that our narrator is prone to megalomania and self-aggrandisement, revealing a gap between how J. Edgar wants to see himself, and how he really is. His self-denial extends to his repressed homosexual relationship with righthand man Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

Eastwood goes out on a limb with Milk Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, whose development of Hoover and Tolson's alleged relationship provides the film with its dramatic thrust. It's the juiciest material, and far more cinematic than Hoover's office-based activities. At 137 minutes, there's plenty that could have been excised.

DiCaprio delivers an Oscar-calibre performance as a monstrous man who's more of a scared little boy inside. He's supported by the superb Naomi Watts, quietly effective as Hoover's loyal secretary, and Hammer, who proves there's mettle beneath the Winklevii good looks we first met in The Social Network. Judi Dench, ever the actress to make a small role loom large, brings menace as Hoover's sinister mum.

The production values are unusually second rate. The cinematography is murky, some of the old-age make-up is frankly ridiculous, and the choice of music (and its absence) dampens what is obviously heightened drama.

Faults aside, J. Edgar is ultimately an engrossing experience anchored by a fascinating character and period of recent history.