The force behind the Feds - film review

Leonardo di Caprio is outstanding in J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s biography of the FBI’s founder

THE Chinese zodiac describes 2012 as the ‘Year of the Dragon', a designation that becomes more prescient with each passing day. The past few weeks have seen no less than two glossy biopics of powerful, right-wing figures, people remembered as much for their fiery tempers as for their achievements. Last week's dragon was none other than Margaret Thatcher, and this week it's the turn of J. Edgar Hoover, legendary founder of the FBI.

Now, the public at large knows (or a least thinks it knows) a total of two things about Hoover. The first, that he was the director of the FBI; the second, that he enjoyed a spot of cross-dressing in his spare time. Those hoping for a lurid caricature of the latter may be disappointed to find J. Edgar focusing on the former. The story, charting Hoover's life from his adolescence in the midst of the first Red Scare to his emergence as one of the most powerful men in America, eschews nearly all reference to his cross-dressing on the quite reasonable basis that it probably never happened. Instead, director Clint Eastwood depicts Hoover as a man driven by a complex mixture of ambition, paranoia, and emotional repression.

It's the last of this trio that dominates the portrayal. Played with characteristic magnetism by Leonardo Di Caprio, Eastwood's Hoover is a man who has jettisoned a normal range of human needs and desires in favour of a rigid honour-code and a fanatical mission to defend the US from ‘radicals'. In one of the final scenes we're given a brief glimpse into Hoover's private chambers, including a bedroom strewn with samurai swords and statues of ancient warriors. The inference is clear: Hoover saw America as a new Roman Empire, with him as its self-appointed guardian.

Eastwood's film, however, is more interested in the strange contradictions of the man than the details of his philosophy and, like Phyllida Lloyd's portrayal of Lady Thatcher in The Iron Lady, the focus is personal rather than political. Particular attention is paid to Hoover's long-term relationship with the debonair Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), who is quite flatly (and rather contentiously) described as his de-facto partner. However, where The Iron Lady's approach felt like a sanitisation of Thatcher''s biography, Eastwood is able to make Hoover's personal neuroses into a key part of the story, one that throws light on the subject's controversial political actions. Pressured by his ambitious mother (Judi Dench), and obsessed by systems of administration, Eastwood's portrait of the private man tells us about the public figure in a way that is utterly compelling.

J. Edgar is not perfect (some of the make-up effects used to ‘age' the principal cast are decidedly dodgy), but the overall impression is positive. Di Caprio turns in what may be the performance of his career so far, and the screenplay by Dustin Lloyd Black (who also wrote Milk) is able to cover a 70-year timespan with impressive ease.

Meanwhile, Eastwood manages to depict Hoover as a deeply troubled and contradictary figure, one entirely dedicated to his own view of himself as the protector of a nation. Highly recommended.

Rating: ****