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"America's top cop," the constant troll in the whirlwind of changing regimes. A vivid Citizen Kane prism, five decades of G-men and public enemies and Washington shenanigans, with Larry Cohen as mordantly analytical as Preminger or Rosi. J. Edgar Hoover, as a young fellow (James Wainwright) a prematurely prim snoop, as a bulky fogey (Broderick Crawford) a golem of repression. "You know how Mr. Hoover was about anything... sexual." Prison packed with immigrants during the Palmer Raids, Dillinger's death mask on the Bureau's desk. Policy of fear, "necessities of war," a boy's best friend is his mother (June Havoc). The paranoid bachelor is a strict boss, he sends agents away for reading Playboy. "The good boy who's envious of the bad boy" is the diagnosis of the comely socialite (Celeste Holm), whose seduction is abruptly rejected so the pickled protagonist can listen to his recordings while Miklós Rózsa's score works up a head of steam. "I got a pretty hectic schedule here, a lot of important people to spy on." Severe pulp abstractions interspersed with archival footage, the monster whelped by the system he goes on to shape. Bobby Kennedy "the baby-faced bastard" (Michael Parks) tangles with him, so does Martin Luther King Jr. (Raymond St. Jacques), both fall during his reign. The procession of sagging Old Hollywood buffaloes (José Ferrer, Howard Da Silva, Lloyd Nolan) occasions Dan Dailey's poignant turn as the longtime companion, Cohen pointedly saves the emotional close-up for the Stork Club waiter suddenly seized by the terror of surveillance. "A man doesn't have much in the way of morality unless he's afraid of somebody." It closes with Nixon, naturally, Eastwood's uncanny portrait does the rest. With Rip Torn, Ronee Blakley, John Marley, Michael Sacks, Jack Cassidy, Andrew Duggan, George Plimpton, Lloyd Gough, Brad Dexter, and George D. Wallace.
--- Fernando F. Croce |