A biopic of the 40th president of the United States, “Reagan” boldly chooses to begin its story with his attempted assassination on March 30, 1981. The first scene, detailing the attempt against Reagan (Dennis Quaid, “The Substance”), is clearly meant to be “Mission: Impossible”-esque: snippy, action-packed and filled with edge.
As tensions are rising, the title card interrupts the sequence.
Given that it is an introductory scene, the title card’s interruption isn’t all that egregious on its own. However, it isn’t until a whopping hour later that the scene continues. When it does, the movie expects its audience to instantly recall the attempt based on arbitrary hints, immediately making the connection between a lingering shot of Reagan’s security guards or the blue backdrop of Reagan’s engagement speech.
Such clumsy pacing and unrealistic audience expectations make the scene unnecessarily confusing to follow. Unfortunately, it isn’t a far cry from what the rest of “Reagan” is like.
Narrated by Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight, “Megalopolis”), a fictional former KGB agent, “Reagan” spans the president’s entire life. This is comprised of Reagan’s Christian upbringing, his stardom in Hollywood and his marriage to Nancy Davis (Penelope Ann Miller, “American Dresser”), his three presidential runs and two terms in office and his anti-communist campaign against the Soviet Union that permeates the duration of the movie.
Director Sean McNamara’s ambition to capture all 93 years of Reagan’s life naturally arises in some blindspots regarding Reagan’s character. Conveniently, the audience is supposed to forget real-life Reagan’s unmistakable role in exacerbating the AIDS epidemic or intensifying the anti-Black War on Drugs in the late 1980s. Instead, McNamara’s Reagan is confident, suave and intelligent. His staunch anticommunism and loyalty to American ideals, McNamara preaches to the audience, make him the definition of a true red-blooded American — someone that all Americans should strive to be.
Reagan’s “Mary Sue”-like characterization makes the movie intensely boring. Sure, a biopic can choose to portray its subject in as positive a light as the director desires. However, “Reagan” takes it a step further, oversimplifying the president’s actions to the point of blind idolization.
McNamara certainly works hard to maintain the movie’s worship of Reagan, and he is determined to take the audience along for the ride. During Reagan’s presidential debate against incumbent president Jimmy Carter in 1980, he made a speech to his viewers that boiled down to this question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Cue a montage of working-class Americans — chefs, barbers, bartenders — standing stock-still, shocked and moved, as they listen to Reagan’s monologue on their big-screen TVs.
These five-second characters are all meant to be stand-ins for the actual movie’s audience, and it’s almost insulting to see how little trust the creators of “Reagan” seem to have in their viewers. The montage is basically the equivalent of pointing directly at the camera and demanding that the audience clap along. Reagan’s wit and charm, the movie preaches to us, constantly gets him what he wants — it’s why Nancy fell in love with him within days, or why Petrovich switched from spying on Reagan to admiring him from afar. The constant hand-holding by the movie’s script, characterization choices and directorial decisions dulls the movie’s nuances and makes it pan out like a two-hour drug commercial.
This isn’t to say that the movie is all bad. I would argue that Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s relationship was relatively well-developed. Yes, maybe Nancy is reduced to a one-dimensional caricature of a supportive wife, but in “Reagan,” who isn’t one-dimensional? Because of this, scenes between Ronald and Nancy Reagan are the highlights of the movie. Quaid and Miller’s performances are believable, and the couple’s devotion and support of one another are never in doubt.
All in all, “Reagan” is a rose-tinted biopic that overlooks and mischaracterizes its own subject. The lack of trust in the audience and nonsensical pacing undermine any possible underlying tension of any of the scenes, making the movie borderline unbearable to watch despite its moments of levity.
Daily Arts Contributor Natasha Shimon can be reached at nshimon@umich.edu
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