Hugh Jackman continues to surprise us with fresh, invigorating new characters. This time, he plays the suave, brilliant presidential hopeful Gary Hart, the Colorado senator who infamously failed in his quest to the White House. It's a fascinating story, and one The Front Runner gets mostly right, at least to those of us who had to learn about it over a decade later rather than live through it. Jason Reitman's latest film has a darker, more urgent tone than we might have expected, and the screenplay from Matt Bai and Jay Carson feels a bit like a mockumentary or teleplay, pumping out exposition through lots of rapid-fire dialogue.
The story, if you didn't know, follows Hart's campaign in 1988 through his decision to drop out of the race. At one point, hounded by reporters, Hart cavalierly dares media to follow him away from the campaign trail and into his private life. Unfortunately a few reporters from the Miami Herald take this to a dangerous extreme, staking out his residence and spying on his movements. They even snap photographs of Hart accompanied by Donna Rice -- not his wife (Vera Farmiga) and not affiliated with his campaign -- and without any evidence publish a story insinuating an adulterous affair. It's a chilling look at how public opinion can work, and how influential news outlets can be.
The problem with this film comes into focus not long after, when the alleged scandal hits the press and fallout forces Hart to restrategize. At this point, when the film revs its engines and rapidly grows intense, it also narrows its scope to destabilizing effect. Too many focal points, each too isolated, you might say. We are jerked from Hart's desperate attempts to keep his campaign afloat to fallout with his wife and daughter; from campaign manager Dixon (J.K. Simmons) fighting organizational derailment to one of his employees comforting Donna Rice; from the reporters fighting disgrace to their editors (including Alfred Molina) holding tightly to their headlines. It could have been a fascinating study of political scandal and the press, but ends up a little too unwieldy to make any clear pronouncements on the issue.
That may not be a problem for some viewers -- after all, the film never pretends to be about anything more than Gary Hart himself -- and it really wasn't for me. But in our age of "fake news" and endless political scandal, this kind of story should soar. Look at The Post last year. You would think that when the president declares certain media outlets to be enemies of the people, more films about this very topic would provide insight or inspiration. And, ultimately, I feel the film would have been stronger if it didn't constantly toe the line as to Hart's alleged affair. Painting Hart as an adulterer would have had one effect, one that could have made the film an uncomfortable moralistic tragedy or radically reshaped the way we think about celebrity culture, the political machine, and our problematic obsession with powerful people's sex lives. Painting Hart as an innocent victim of bad journalism and intrusive public interest would have had a very different effect, one that I think would be most resonant in our society.
But, much as we've seen in our political history since, well, since Gary Hart lost the election, we don't always look after our communal best interests. And so The Front Runner exists not as an indictment, nor even really a commentary, so much as a snapshot of the cost of our prurient popular sovereignty.
IMDb: The Front Runner
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