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Alynda Wheat, People: WEAK (cg) "...a desiccated account, lacking in insight, warmth and even color... as revelatory as an old newsreel -- and about as subtle." (Read the full review...) 123 words, 11/10/11 Richard Corliss, Time: FAIR "Where is the fiery intensity, the looming magnificence, that J. Edgar Hoover must have radiated to secure his power from the Presidents who employed him?" (Read the full review...) 1,339 words, 11/11/11 Jake Coyle, Associated Press: VERY GOOD (cg) "...a riveting, noble attempt by Eastwood... It's another largely fascinating, if disappointingly flawed chapter in Eastwood's fantastic late period." (Read the full review...) 1,027 words, 11/10/11 Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly: VERY GOOD (cg) "DiCaprio and a superb Armie Hammer give impassioned performances.... the actors movingly convey the anguish of repressed love." (Read the full review...) 165 words, 11/10/11 Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: VERY GOOD (cg) "...emotionally reticent yet absorbing.... I was held by 'J. Edgar,' but it's a movie -- like the man at its center -- with a buried heart." (Read the full review...) 763 words, 11/11/11 Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: VERY GOOD (cg) "...a movie exhilarated by biting off more than it can chew... Even when the film trips on its tall ambitions, you can't shake it off." (Read the full review...) 455 words, 11/11/11 Claudia Puig, USA Today: VERY GOOD (cg) "...avoids the predictable... shines a probing beam of light on a man who was widely feared, often disliked, but rarely understood." (Read the full review...) 341 words, 11/11/11 Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com: OUTSTANDING (cg) "Few films span seven decades this comfortably. The sets, the props, the clothes, and details, look effortlessly right, and note how Eastwood handles the many supporting roles..." (Read the full review...) 908 words, 11/08/11 Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: EXCELLENT (cg) "For all its rough edges, 'J. Edgar' is finally a thought-provoking motion picture of deep sadness, a far-ranging elegy disguised as a historical drama." (Read the full review...) 784 words, 11/08/11 James Berardinelli, Reel Views: VERY GOOD (cg) "...features a tremendous lead performance, impeccable period detail, the fascinating use of an 'unreliable narrator,' and some individually compelling scenes." (Read the full review...) 945 words, 11/09/11
Manohla Dargis, New York Times: OUTSTANDING "...the tenderness of the love story comes as a shock. Anchored by a forceful, vulnerable Leonardo DiCaprio, who lays bare J. Edgar Hoover's humanity..." (Read the full review...) 1,192 words, 11/09/11 Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "DiCaprio, our most underappreciated major actor, superbly fills in the blanks where the script fails. He does it with the un-Hoover-like traits of dignity, subtlety and clarity..." (Read the full review...) 484 words, 11/09/11 Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: EXCELLENT "...gets its power from the way the director's traditional filmmaking style interacts with the revisionist thrust of Dustin Lance Black's script." (Read the full review...) 879 words, 11/09/11 Lou Lumenick, New York Post: OUTSTANDING (cg) "DiCaprio may well receive a Best Actor Oscar for his tour de force -- greatly abetted by Armie Hammer in his first major role as the flamboyant but frustrated Tolson." (Read the full review...) 708 words, 11/09/11 Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: VERY GOOD (cg) "This may be a closety film about a closety character, but the tensions between Eastwood's direction and the script he's directing keep us off-guard in an intriguing way." (Read the full review...) 884 words, 11/09/11 Rafer Guzman, New York Newsday: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "A Hollywood biopic in the old-fashioned mode... expensively made and impressive to look at, but never terribly illuminating." (Read the full review...) 292 words, 11/09/11 David Edelstein, New York Magazine: WEAK "...shapeless and turgid and ham-handed... rich in bad lines and worse readings. Direction this ponderous exposes all the contrivances in Black's script..." (Read the full review...) 621 words, 11/07/11 Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: OUTSTANDING (cg) "Few films span seven decades this comfortably. The sets, the props, the clothes, and details, look effortlessly right, and note how Eastwood handles the many supporting roles..." (Read the full review...) 908 words, 11/08/11 J. Hoberman, Village Voice/LA Weekly: EXCELLENT "Although hardly flawless, Eastwood's biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since the 'Letters From Iwo Jima-Flags of Our Fathers' duo, if not 'Unforgiven.' " (Read the full review...) 845 words, 11/09/11 Peter Howell, Toronto Star: VERY GOOD (cg) "...wildly ambitious... admirable..." (Read the full review...) 801 words, 11/11/11 Rick Groen, Toronto Globe & Mail: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...chock full of random information... woefully lacking in any real power." (Read the full review...) 965 words, 11/11/11 Norman Wilner, Toronto Now: WEAK (cg) "...the sort of Oscar bait that plods along convinced of its own supreme importance when in fact it's just dull and superficial." (Read the full review...) 212 words, 11/10/11
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: WEAK (cg) "...an ambitious, ultimately deflating portrait that somehow manages to elide Hoover's worst abuses of power while making a burlesque of his personal vulnerabilities." (Read the full review...) 910 words, 11/09/11 Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...in the end, it's hollow stuff. DiCaprio, often slathered in aging makeup, other times playing Hoover with boyish officiousness, never cracks the inner life of the man." (Read the full review...) 519 words, 11/11/11 Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: MODERATE (cg) "...a lumbering miscalculation, a slow and clumsy re-think of the late F.B.I. founder J. Edgar Hoover's life and career..." (Read the full review...) 794 words, 11/11/11 Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune: VERY GOOD (cg) "DiCaprio is pitch-perfect.... His performance gives us the tragedy of a man at war with himself." (Read the full review...) 633 words, 11/11/11 Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: VERY GOOD (cg) "Hammer is outstanding.... Dench, too, is good.... But DiCaprio is the catalyst.... 'J. Edgar' is worth seeing again, flaws and all." (Read the full review...) 747 words, 11/09/11 Ty Burr, Boston Globe: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "That the film never ultimately convinces - that at times it's quite entertainingly bad - can be blamed on both an unfocused script and the project's very bigness." (Read the full review...) 966 words, 11/11/11 Stephen Whitty, New Jersey Star-Ledger: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "Black's script is alternately conventional (stagily setting itself up as Hoover's dictated memoirs) and confused (featuring flashbacks within flashbacks)." (Read the full review...) 484 words, 11/11/11 Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: MODERATE (cg) "...too ambiguous, too gentle and too noncommittal..." (Read the full review...) 710 words, 11/09/11 Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...too often feels like the rough draft of the great movie it could have been; a character sketch, not quite a portrait." (Read the full review...) 527 words, 11/11/11 Shawn Levy, Portland Oregonian: GOOD (cg) "...strange and choppy... Eastwood and his screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, hold Hoover at arm's length, never, seemingly, able to decide if he's a hero or a villain." (Read the full review...) 399 words, 11/11/11 Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: MODERATE (cg) "...even the technical attributes are tinny.... It's gratifying to see an old bully outed as a hypocrite, but by distracting us from bigger crimes, 'J. Edgar' is a public enemy." (Read the full review...) 538 words, 11/11/11 Steve Persall, St. Petersburg Times: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black ('Milk') constantly seem at odds about what type of expose the film should be." (Read the full review...) 547 words, 11/10/11 Tom Long, Detroit News: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...manages to be both epic and empty.... It doesn't help that the actors spend much of the film laboring beneath mounds of aging makeup." (Read the full review...) 312 words, 11/11/11 Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "Half of this expansive picture is too on-the-nose and literal: It's hammy hokum.... the other weird half goes further than you might expect." (Read the full review...) 837 words, 11/09/11
J. Hoberman, Village Voice/LA Weekly: EXCELLENT "Although hardly flawless, Eastwood's biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since the 'Letters From Iwo Jima-Flags of Our Fathers' duo, if not 'Unforgiven.' " (Read the full review...) 845 words, 11/09/11 Katey Rich, Cinema Blend: MODERATE (cg) "...ultimately undone by a whole lot of bad decisions, from Dustin Lance Black's needlessly time-jumping script to Clint Eastwood's typical no-frills direction..." (Read the full review...) 638 words, 11/09/11 Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix: MODERATE (cg) "DiCaprio has the unenviable task of playing a character without a single redeeming feature. He's good as the little merde, though the film itself wobbles..." (Read the full review...) 147 words, 11/10/11 Tasha Robinson, AV Club: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...the gap between this nicely shot, neatly gift-wrapped package and messy human reality feels wide." (Read the full review...) 392 words, 11/10/11 Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline: MODERATE (cg) "...a sensitive, sympathetic portrait of a scummy little man... But it's all too earnest, to the point of serving, unwittingly or otherwise, as an apologia." (Read the full review...) 1,206 words, 11/09/11 Glenn Heath Jr., Slant: POOR (cg) "For the first time, I can't excuse the bull Clint Eastwood is selling.... a suffocating bore of indulgent orating, faux-historiography, and inconsequential dramatic outbursts." (Read the full review...) 720 words, 11/04/11 Norman Wilner, Toronto Now: WEAK (cg) "...the sort of Oscar bait that plods along convinced of its own supreme importance when in fact it's just dull and superficial." (Read the full review...) 212 words, 11/10/11 Curt Holman, Atlanta Creative Loafing: WEAK (cg) "...covers some fascinating territory... but the film never offers a compelling tale of a good man who succumbs to his worst impulses." (Read the full review...) 408 words, 11/10/11 MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher: FAIR (cg) "...no matter how good DiCaprio is, he can't invent an engaging story if it's not there in the script. 'J. Edgar' is too staid and static, and too unfocused..." (Read the full review...) 964 words, 11/14/11
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: POOR "Mr. Eastwood's ponderous direction, a clumsy script by Dustin Lance Black and ghastly slatherings of old-age makeup all conspire to put the story at an emotional and historical distance." (Read the full review...) 726 words, 11/11/11 Manohla Dargis, New York Times: OUTSTANDING "...the tenderness of the love story comes as a shock. Anchored by a forceful, vulnerable Leonardo DiCaprio, who lays bare J. Edgar Hoover's humanity..." (Read the full review...) 1,192 words, 11/09/11 David Denby, New Yorker: EXCELLENT "...a nuanced account of J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a sympathetic monster... another remarkable turn in Clint Eastwood's career." (Read the full review...) 1,410 words, 11/14/11 Ella Taylor, NPR: MODERATE "...mostly dry-as-dust business.... Armie Hammer as Clyde Tolson redeems this lumbering quasi-history and brings it to life as a surprisingly tender love story." (Read the full review...) 860 words, 11/08/11 Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: EXCELLENT "...gets its power from the way the director's traditional filmmaking style interacts with the revisionist thrust of Dustin Lance Black's script." (Read the full review...) 879 words, 11/09/11 Dana Stevens, Slate: MODERATE "...surprisingly perceptive and tender. But when it tries to provide a sweeping overview of seven decades of American history, 'J. Edgar' can feel generic and vague..." (Read the full review...) 1,032 words, 11/09/11 Andrew O'Hehir, Salon: POOR "...a mendacious, muddled, sub-mediocre mess that turns some of the most explosive episodes of the 20th century into bad domestic melodrama..." (Read the full review...) 1,441 words, 11/08/11
Peter Debruge, Daily Variety: GOOD (NOT GREAT) "...a mostly dry portrayal of one man's crusade to reform law enforcement..." (Read the full review...) 1,248 words, 11/03/11 Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: VERY GOOD "...tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private." (Read the full review...) 1,520 words, 11/03/11 Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: EXCELLENT "...gets its power from the way the director's traditional filmmaking style interacts with the revisionist thrust of Dustin Lance Black's script." (Read the full review...) 879 words, 11/09/11 Emanuel Levy, Cinema 24/7: VERY GOOD (cg) "...contains many provocative and powerful moments, but it's also a film that perhaps tries to accomplish too much within its time frame of two hours and 17 minutes." (Read the full review...) 1,747 words, 11/05/11 Manohla Dargis, New York Times: OUTSTANDING "...the tenderness of the love story comes as a shock. Anchored by a forceful, vulnerable Leonardo DiCaprio, who lays bare J. Edgar Hoover's humanity..." (Read the full review...) 1,192 words, 11/09/11 Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: POOR "Mr. Eastwood's ponderous direction, a clumsy script by Dustin Lance Black and ghastly slatherings of old-age makeup all conspire to put the story at an emotional and historical distance." (Read the full review...) 726 words, 11/11/11
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