REAGAN
(director: Sean McNamara; screenwriters: Howard Klausner/based on the book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor; cinematographer: Christian Sebaldt; editors: Jeffrey Canavan, Clayton Woodhull; music: John Coda; cast: Dennis Quaid (Ronald Reagan), Penelope Ann Miller (Nancy Reagan), Mena Suvari (Jane Wyman), C. Thomas Howell (Caspar Weinberger), Jon Voight (Viktor Petrovich), Robert Davi (Leonid Brezhnev), Kevin Sorbo (Reverend Cleaver), Kevin Dillon (Jack Warner), Nick Searcy (James Baker), David Henrie (Young Regan), Xander Berkely (George Schultz), Lesley-Anne Down (Margaret Thatcher), Trevor Donovan (John Barietta), Jennifer O’Neill (Older Nelle Reagan), Randy Wayne (Tony Dolan), Dan Lauria (Tip O’Neill), Olek Krupa (Mikhail Gorbachev); Runtime: 141; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producer: Mark Joseph; Rawhide Pictures/ShowBiz Direct; 2024)
“It will likely be cherished by those who care less about film than they do about Reagan.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An idolizing, preachy and clunky biopic on President Reagan directed to appeal to only Reagan supporters by Sean McNamara (“Race to Space”/”Soul Surfer”) and written in the same uncritical way by Howard Klausner. It’s based on the book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor.
Whatever your views might be on the staunch conservative President Reagan, he deserved a better film than this sluggish clunker. I know many Reagan followers will probably like it and not find it as shallow as I did, but I don’t see many undecideds being drawn to such a political film that plays out as an unabashed love-letter to Reagan. It will likely be cherished by those who care less about film than they do about Reagan.
The film opens with the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan and proceeds to tell its superficial narrative of his career highlights by using the framing device of an ex-KGB spy (Jon Voight) telling the subject’s life story to a fellow agent in order to explain how the Soviet Union was toppled through the devotion and integrity of Reagan (ugh!).
It only gets more kiss ass the more it goes on.
It covers his childhood, his career as a B film star in Hollywood, his marriage and divorce to his actress first wife Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) and then his marriage to second wife Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller). Because of its weak script, Dennis Quaid playing an affable President Reagan never was convincing.
It’s a slog at an overlong running-time of over two hours. There are no nuances, and it fills the screen with a host of cardboard characters. But, at least, Reagan was viewed as a patriot, who got Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall that left us with a glimmer of hope Russia might become a democracy (How did that turn out?).
REVIEWED ON 9/11/2024 GRADE: C-
dennisschwartzreviews.com