J.EDGAR: barely scratches the surface of a dark American political drama

Leonardo DiCaprio slathers on the prosthetic make-up to play legendary FBI director J.Edgar Hoover in this biopic which is as dry and institutional as the man himself.

While it's true that Hoover was perhaps the quintessential government bureaucrat, spending his entire working life developing and then maintaining an increasingly death-like grip on the levers of power, there is much that is fascinating and unique about his career but Dustin Lance Black's ('Milk') script never really gets to grips with it and, with the exception of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby, fails to do more than just scratch the surface.
But the fault is not Black's alone. I certainly expected more from a director of Clint Eastwood's stature than this disappointingly unimaginative stab at the biographical genre. J. EDGAR chooses the 'character as an old man looking back at moments in his life which are illustrated with flashbacks' route to informing us just who Hoover was, rather than focusing on one period of his life which might stand for his entire life.
Admittedly there's way too much in Hoover's almost 50 year career as FBI director for a two and a quarter hour long film to explore in depth, but that's all the more reason to not try and cover all of it. Anyone who watches J.EDGAR without first reading one of the excellent biographies about him ('Official and Confidential: the secret life of JEH' by Anthony Summers, or 'Secrecy and Power' by Richard Gid Powers are both working checking out) is going to be left more than a little confused by all the references to scandals surrounding some of the 20th century's major American political figures (Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson, John and Robert Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joe McCarthy) who get a namecheck but little more, in an effort to demonstrate the length and breadth of Hoover's power in Washington DC.
There's too many scenes of events that were to become part of history where the characters speak as if they're aware of the significance and feel the need to speak for posterity rather than as real people living in the here and now of these situations.

Just as he did as Howard Hughes in 'The Aviator' DiCaprio does an impressive visual job recreating a very recognisable public figure although he never gets Hoover's voice to sound old enough to be entirely convincing. And while the make-up gurus do a great job in convincingly aging DiCaprio from young hotshot to stodgy old institution, they appear to have handed over responsibility to the interns for doing the same to Armie Hammer as Hoover's lover (and FBI Assistant Director) Clyde Tolson. Although in real life he was five years younger than Hoover, by the end the film he looks 150 years old to Hoover's 77 years.
Dull and plodding, wordy, uninspiring and just way too dark, J.EDGAR is a major disappointment which promises much but delivers very little. There's a great political drama to be made out of Hoover's life but this film isn't it.