Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan in a scene from Reagan.NOAH HAMILTON/Supplied
- Reagan
- Directed by Sean McNamara
- Written by Howard Klausner, based on the book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor
- Starring Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller and Jon Voight
- Classification PG; 135 minutes
- Opens in theatres Aug. 30
A biopic so hagiographic that it seems like God Almighty should go into arbitration with the Producers Guild of America for an onscreen credit, the new presidential drama Reagan offers one of the most unintentionally enlightening viewing experiences of the year.
In its unabashedly conservative politics and embarrassingly slipshod execution, the film is required viewing for audiences hoping to understand America’s current cultural divide – and anyone wondering why liberals still retain a monopoly on the art and commerce of moviemaking.
In development since 2010 and shot way back in 2020, director Sean McNamara’s gaudy love letter to the 40th U.S. president hasn’t benefited in age or wisdom from its long production timeline. The film’s sense of history is hasty, its characterizations crude. And by combining a twinkly-eyed tone with some of the goofiest performances in recent memory, the whole thing constantly threatens to reveal itself as a stealth parody flick – something that the Funny or Die folks might’ve released a decade ago before thinking better of themselves.
The disastrous decision-making starts right off the top, when McNamara and his screenwriter Howard Klausner decide to structure their adaptation of Paul Kengor’s book as a drama told through the perspective of real-life KGB officer Viktor Petrovich Ivanov, who spends the film recalling for a subordinate his time watching Reagan’s career from afar. Perhaps this geopolitical framing might have worked if the filmmakers didn’t view the Soviets solely as moustache-twirling cartoon villains – and if they didn’t cast a beyond-hammy Jon Voight as Petrovich, his narration indictable of Boris and Natasha-level crimes against Russian accents – but this isn’t a film interested in the slightest inch of fair-and-balanced nuance.
Olek Krupa plays Mikhail Gorbachev in the film.NOAH HAMILTON/Supplied
What follows instead is 135 minutes of rah-rah Reagan boosterism that zips through the man’s life with a bizarrely impressive speed. So many major cultural and political moments come and go without a moment to dwell on their impact that it is as if McNamara (best-known for the inspirational sports films Soul Surfer and The Miracle Season) knows that slowing down for a beat would mean that his film would actually have to reckon with history. No life, certainly not one so monumental and complicated as Reagan’s, can be satisfyingly condensed into a single feature film, of course. But this is a Coles Notes level of biography that is convinced it’s The Greatest Story Ever Told.
This sense of deluded bravado also fuels Dennis Quaid’s central performance, which oscillates between ultra-righteous conviction and deeply silly shtick. Playing Reagan from his Hollywood days right through his final years, Quaid adopts a flinty voice that tries to capture the politician’s soothing teleprompter-ready tenor but ends up conjuring something like a sinister Mister Rogers. Also slipping into bizarre caricature is Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, the world’s most supportive political wife.
The usually dynamic performers aren’t helped by whatever de-aging techniques McNamara and his team are employing, either, with Quaid and Miller’s skins stretched so tight and smooth in early scenes and comically wrinkled in later sequences that they recall the horrific dystopian plastic surgery of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Or perhaps the very worst doctor’s waiting room in the darkest corner of Beverly Hills.
I imagine that latter locale might be close to wherever McNamara and his casting agents cobbled together for Reagan’s supporting performers, a motley collection of either the few openly conservative actors in Hollywood or those of undetermined political stripes who have indiscriminate standards. The results are some truly eye-popping performances, including Robert Davi as Soviet icon Leonid Brezhnev, Entourage’s Kevin Dillon as studio boss Jack Warner and Creed singer Scott Stapp as Frank Sinatra. Only Xander Berkely, playing Reagan’s foreign-policy guru George Shultz, serves his character thoughtfully.
While McNamara gets mild credit for not wholly ignoring Reagan’s failings, the uglier corners of his presidency are merely summarized via a brief mid-film montage of archival news footage set to Phil Collins’s Land of Confusion, the sequence hermetically sealing off certain parts of history from the rest of the movie.
In their refusal to engage honestly with its subject and his legacy, the filmmakers will likely inspire all but the most arch-conservative of moviegoers to adopt one of the Reagan family’s most famous lines and just say … no.