It didn’t take longer than about five minutes for me to figure out exactly what type of biopic Reagan was going to be.
Obviously, it’s a childhood-to-death tracing of the life of former president Ronald Reagan, but it’s what’s emphasized and what’s left out that tells you all you want to know about the tone of the storytelling. Never let it be said that Dennis Quaid doesn’t always give it his all, no matter the quality of the movie. But even his admirable performance can’t hold up this mostly dreadful, right-leaning, faith-heavy bit of hero worship.
And no, I’m not calling Reagan right-leaning and faith heavy—of course he was both and proud of it. It’s the film that skews the truth about Reagan into a piece of slanted propaganda that excuses bad behavior and policies and never lets us forget that God (through Ronnie) conquered the communist Soviets before they could do it to us.
In the first of many bizarre choices, the story is told through flashbacks from the point of view of retired KGB spy Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight), recounting the story of Ronald Reagan to a young political upstart who is trying to figure out why the Soviet Union never infiltrated the United States years earlier in order to break it down from the inside.
And after two hours and 20 minutes of film, the answer is: because Reagan stopped them in their tracks by being vigilant from his years as an actor, all the way through his presidency. Petrovich studied Reagan from early in his career, suspecting he would be a problem for them in later years. Although the younger man being told this story (whom we’re told is an up-and-comer in Russian politics) is never identified, I suspect it’s meant to be a young Putin (pure speculation, don’t hold me to that), which only makes this narrative framework all the more strange.
The film tracks Reagan from his small-town roots to his glory days as a mid-level Hollywood actor, marrying Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari), but soon divorcing because she found him dull, especially when her career began to take off. He later married Nancy Davis (Penelope Ann Miller), and two more perfectly matched people never existed. Always emphasizing his faith and law-and-order stance on all things, Reagan then takes us through the actor’s journey into politics, first as the president of the Screen Actors Guild, then to California’s governor, and eventually to the White House. His first attempt to get the Republican nomination was lost to Gerald Ford at the RNC, but he soundly beat Jimmy Carter four years later, while America was deep in a recession.
Directed by Sean McNamara (Soul Surfer, The Miracle Season), the film lets Reagan’s diplomacy take center stage, while ignoring that his trickle-down economics plan (which is spelled out in great detail here) has always been deemed a failure. In addition, the film politely skips right over the president’s homophobic stance on the beginnings of the AIDS crisis, and it treats the traitorous, arms-for-hostages Iran-Contra scandal as if Reagan was simply acting in the best interest of true freedom fighters. As the film goes on, these misrepresentations go from hilarious to infuriating. It’s interesting that Reagan’s theme of the president being distrustful of the Russians when America was on the brink of nuclear war with them seems in direct contradiction to more recent presidents cozying up to Russian leaders. I’m curious how that will sit with the faithful.
The film drops in a few familiar and questionable faces, including Kevin Sorbo as a preacher, Kevin Dillon as Jack Warner, Robert Davi as Leonid Brezhnev, singer Scott Stapp as Frank Sinatra(!), and even Chris Massoglia as Pat Boone, who remembers a reverend who supposedly predicted Reagan would win the presidency. One of the better performances in the film (and there aren’t many) is Xander Berkeley as Secretary of State George Schultz, who had a close relationship with Reagan. Berkeley and Quaid actually have a few insightful moments that break through the paper-thin script from Howard Klausner. One of the worst bits of casting goes to Lesley-Anne Down’s portrayal of British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, who is written as just another powerful, wise leader doing everything right for her country.
Reagan doesn’t go so far as to paint the late president as flawless, but even his mistakes are presented as faith-driven ones, ones that any good person would probably commit under similar circumstances. Even the sequence detailing his assassination attempt feels clunky and serves only to show how close Ronnie and Nancy were when things were at their worst. Yet no attention is paid to the debate over who was in charge when Reagan was out of commission. The film doesn’t even work as a functioning love story, which it easily could have been structured as in better hands. Instead it’s just a series of events, lined up one after the other. During the end credits, we’re treated to a succession of photos of many of the real events re-created for the movie. Those are just as engaging and emotionally gripping as the film itself, because all Reagan is is those images brought to life with no spark behind them.
I’ll end with this: the only nightmares I remember having as a teenager were about an impending nuclear war, and I fully blame the cowboy politics of Ronald Reagan for those nightmares. Make a movie about that guy, and then we can talk.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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