What happened to Jewell is that after his good deed, the media caught wind the he was the early top suspect with the FBI for who planted the bomb in the first place. So, instead of getting free beers for life, he was hounded by the media and attacked by the 24-hour news cycle for weeks. Until recently, if anyone still remembered his name, if was probably because they still thought he was the bomber.
The movie Richard Jewell does a fine job showing what Richard Jewell went through. It shows how he was mistreated by the FBI and the media. It also shows why the FBI and the media were probably right to suspect him too. The character Richard Jewell, played with surprising nuance by Paul Walter Hauser, fits a lot of the worst cop stereotypes. He's easily drunk on power. He's unnervingly gun crazy. He pretends to know more about everything than he really does. And, he's annoyingly goofy. You know in grade school that kid who almost seemed like he was trying to get picked on? That's Richard Jewell. He's a poor loner who lives at home with his mother. The movie makes it very clear that it's not insane that the FBI would look into him as a suspect. The movie does however have the benefit of hindsight, so we always know that he's innocent.
The same phrase kept coming to mind as I watched this movie: Never assume villainy when incompetence will do. Most of the worst things that happen in the world are the result of someone being doing something badly rather than actively being bad. The first 80% of this movie treats the people against Jewell as villains. The FBI officers (played by Jon Hamm and Ian Gomez) are trying to pin the crime on him because they have something against him and are fine with prosecuting him rather than work to find who actually did it. The press (mainly a reporter played by Olivia Wilde) are unscrupulous story-chasers who would happily ruin a man's life with incomplete research in order to get a headline. The movie attempts to humanize the agents and journalist late, but it feels hollow. The much more interesting story is one in which we see early on why Jon Hamm is so convinced that Jewell is the bomber. Wilde's character is far more interesting if we aren't introduced to her as someone who literally sleeps with a source for information*. Isn't this story much more tragic if it's treated as a story that got out of control due to some avoidable mistakes rather than a series of malicious acts?
*By the way, Wilde plays the real reporter Kathy Scruggs. There is no evidence that Scruggs ever slept with a source. She also died in 2001 and can't defend herself. That's a pretty crass move by Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray.
After how much I hated The Mule last year, this is a big improvement from Clint Eastwood in that Richard Jewell didn't fill me with rage. It's a tonal mess though. Sam Rockwell as Jewell's lawyer seems to think he's in a lightweight buddy law procedural. Hauser is giving a serious performance but with comedy mannerisms. Kathy Bates as Hauser's mother always seems about one line-read away from looking down on the character. Wilde seems to think she's in His Girl Friday filtered through a Showgirls lens. Hamm and Gomez are arch for the sake of being arch. Look, Clint Eastwood is 89. I don't think it's crazy to suggest that he's not making movies that are as coherent as they used to be.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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