Directed By Sean McNamara

Starring – Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller, Jon Voight

The Plot – From dusty small-town roots, to the glitter of Hollywood, and then on to commanding the world stage, the film is a cinematic journey of overcoming the odds. Told through the voice of Viktor Petrovich (Voight), a former KGB agent whose life becomes inextricably linked with Ronald Reagan’s (Quaid) when Reagan first caught the Soviets’ attention as an actor in Hollywood, this film offers a perspective as unique as it is captivating, involving one man who overcame the odds, sustained by the love of a woman (Miller) who supported him in his journey.

Rated PG-13 for violent content and smoking

Reagan – Official Trailer (2024) Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

As a biopic and passionate love-letter to Ronald, ‘Reagan’ stumbles in the execution of a flawed framing device and frivolous structure, but it does manage to attain some semblance of meaning and merit of its titular protagonist, which resulted in a mutually respectful opinion of the man beloved by both sides of the political aisle. Quaid’s energy and commitment to portrayal gives Ronald the kind of charisma that humbled him to many Americans seeking change and improvements from the Vietnam era, but beyond that the fresh instincts of his character helped to provide an unobstructed look into the causes and solutions of many of America’s problems, during such an unpredictable time throughout the Cold War, and that confidence and empathy continuously shines through in such a refreshing candor that makes it effortlessly effective and instinctive towards balancing Ron’s heart, but also his resilient demeanor that constantly stood up to any of the world’s superpowers. This allows the performances of Quaid and Miller plenty of time to shine, with a lived-in brand of chemistry to their respective portrayals that infectiously makes you smile and perk up, each time they are in frame with one another. Quaid’s immensity in task of emulating one of the White House’s most impersonated presidents could easily become a cartoonish caricature if done improperly, but between the soft deliveries of his vocal range and consistency among facial mannerisms, Dennis does attain that merit of believability that helps to override some of the temporary distractions in him looking nothing like Ronald Reagan, all the while cementing what is easily his most energetic turn in the last decade. As for Penelope Ann Miller, her turn as Nancy Reagan is kind of a thankless one, especially since the script wastes zero time fleshing her out as anything other than the safety net that Ronald continuously falls back on, but Miller vividly brought back memories of hearing Nancy talk and walk that made her casting an easy no-brainer, all the while appraising the character with sweetness and sensibilities that served as the driving force to stabilizing Ronald’s presidency, especially when Alzheimer’s began to cripple him away from the limelight of the press. Lastly, the film is made by a collection of production companies that I’ve never heard of, but their collective efforts did allow for some production values to the presentation that were surprisingly expressive and immersive, especially in echoing the radiance of the 80’s, during a third act climax that will inevitably serve as the reasoning why many of the audience sought out this particular film. Iconic tracks scoring key moments alongside the Cold War, as well as archival footage of MTV and news reports, help to gain a greater sense of reality outside of the unfortunately condensed confines of this movie’s focus, resulting in artistic merit in compelling sequences that I wish the movie’s first half would’ve embraced more wholeheartedly. For my money, the third act of this movie is easily the film’s highlight, as it deals with Reagan’s time in office, and though Ronald had more supporters than haters in his eight years in office, McNamara responsibly shows the civil unrest with regards to his broken promises that removed some of the wind from his legacy’s sale, helping to emit a complete picture within the film’s setting that I appreciated in the script establishing that he’s not quite as perfect as some of his passionate followers have led him to be.

NEGATIVES

As previously alluded to, this film falls victim to several poor choices in its production that wastes away a valiant effort, beginning with a screenplay that is quite literally all over the place, with regards to its grasp and focus. This is a 130 minute exercise in futility that spans sixty years in the life of Reagan, and while some moments within that frame will obviously be focused on less than others, I was astounded at how little relevance that anything had during the film’s first hour to where the extent of the journey took us, especially with a framing device of this KGB informant strangely reflecting on the intimate moments of Ronald’s life that he wasn’t even a part of. Ronald and this agent never meet throughout the duration of this film, and only share a room together during one scene throughout, but he talks about the president like they’ve been best friends since summer camp, as kids, idolizing Ronald in ways that make him feel more like Batman than Abraham Lincoln. In terms of meaningful material, the film plays like the first cut of a studio edit, with more than an hour of unnecessary directions and throwaway characters stacking like itemized chapters on a DVD menu, resulting in some of the worst pacing in a movie that I’ve experienced this year. Because the script continuously jumps between scenes and key moments in Ronald’s life, it’s hard to remain focused or even care about what they’re summoning, leading not only to sloppy storytelling in the way it conjures characters out of thin air with only on-screen text to elaborate who they are, but also a complete lack of focus that drains the film of any energy that it attains in the depth of the compelling performances. Then there’s the batshit moments of this film, like Creed’s Scott Stapp portraying Frank Sinatra for a throwaway ten second stage performance, or Kevin Sorbo baptizing Reagan, only to never be seen again. Scenes so superficial and shallow that you wonder why the production would even waste budget towards attaining them, instead of utilizing it in places that it rightfully should be, mainly the cinematography and make-up designs for the movie, which are abhorrent. Even if you can get past the fact that the movie frequently garners that shine of artificiality that doesn’t play particularly well on the big screen, you’re still plagued by mundane color grading and obvious green-screen work, with the latter actually featuring a superimposed Voight to a scene he physically isn’t a part of, succeeded only by the amateur levels of make-up and prosthetics that reminded me of sitcom levels of transformation. On one hand, they’re so awful that they’re unintentionally funny, like when Voight’s character flashes back to the past, and he dons a thin beard and road-scraped wig that looked strangely like Roseanne when she portrayed a man for the Halloween episode of her show, but on the other, they’re completely absent from the designs of the character, which point to the film’s greatest misstep, in that its characters simply don’t age. Considering I previously alluded to the film covering sixty years of story, this is simply inexcusable, especially when Ronald, as a diminishing Alzheimer’s patient, rides a horse into the hills and valley’s of the countryside, and we as an audience are asked to see him as this frail being who is barely hanging on, despite him looking like a 50-year-old whose biggest flaw is one nacho plate too many towards climbing atop his horse. This problem could’ve also helped with obscuring the familiarities of Quaid and Miller, especially as their characters transition into the Ron and Nancy that we experienced in the public limelight, but they look the same during the film’s end as they do during its opening twenty minutes, making it difficult not only to fully commit to seeing them as the figures they’re portraying, but also leading to inconsistencies within the respective decades they accompany, to which the movie even ironically points out with a line of dialogue, “Ronnie, you don’t look like you’ve aged a day”, during one dramatic sequence. Speaking of dramatics, the film as a whole feels tone deaf and improper throughout most of its material, which directly undercuts into the stakes and intensities of global-threatening war. Comedy should’ve been such a small sampling of what this film was truly about, but unfortunately this strange quirky consistency remains with the film throughout its duration, and while I don’t want to say there’s no drama throughout the film, as the Cold War climax would say otherwise, I can safely say that it doesn’t feel as monumental or world-threatening as it rightfully should, resulting in a complete lack of urgency from a film already drifting in the wind, as a result of its bloated run time.

OVERALL
‘Reagan’ flounders from conflicting execution rather than conventional storytelling, diminishing a charming turn from Dennis Quaid, who hands in his best work in over a decade as the praised commander in chief. While the film does have a deep admiration and respect for Ronald that borders hagiography, the astonishing lack of competency within its baffling technical components is the film’s greatest hinderance, inside of a world where characters don’t age or even physically exist within the scene they’re asked to accompany. McNamara, tear this bumbling biopic down.

My Grade: 3/10 or F+