Review of The Front Runner (2018) by Bertaut1 — 27 Jan 2019

Reasonably well-made but barely scratches the thematic surface.

Based on Matt Bali's 2014 book, All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, written for the screen by Bai, Jason Reitman, and Jay Carson, and directed by Reitman, The Front Runner tells the story of democratic Colorado senator Gary Hart's (Hugh Jackman) doomed 1988 presidential campaign. His reputation was shattered when a Miami Herald story accused him of an affair, and only three weeks into his campaign, he withdrew. The film presents the events of those weeks as a turning-point; when political journalism and tabloid sensationalism irrevocably fused. However, it spreads itself far too thin, trying to take on the perspective too many characters, telling us very little about any of them, least of all Hart himself.

Although the film doesn't absolve Hart of being a terrible husband, it does present him as an inherently decent man trying to protect his privacy against a predatory media. Following the line of the book, Reitman posits that the reporter who broke the story, Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis), did Hart himself, the American people, and political discourse in general a grave disservice insofar as tabloid reporting of this nature has gone on to undercut serious political debate, and has thus subverted the importance of the political process, cheapening it by way of cynicism, sensationalism, and sleaze.

Although ostensibly about the events of 1987, the film has one eye on the here and now, musing as to why a man who was merely accused of having an affair (an accusation that was never proved) had his career destroyed, and yet a man accused of sexual misconduct on multiple occasions, a man who is on tape bragging about how he can sexually assault women with impunity, could be elected to the highest office in the land. The answer suggested by the film is that, since Hart, scandal has become just another aspect of politics, and that which destroyed him in 1987 barely made a dent on Donald Trump in 2016.

However, although this should make for fascinating drama, The Front Runner doesn't really work. The most egregious problem is the depiction of Hart himself. For starters, it's questionable, at best, to portray him as the victim. In this post-#MeToo era, suggesting that a powerful man was wronged when his infidelity was exposed is more than a little naïve. Indeed, the film seems to yearn for simpler times, when potentially great men could walk the path to positions of power, unimpeded by intelligent women speaking out against them, or diligent reporters uncovering their less wholesome activities, when infidelity remained hidden from the public. The Front Runner is not a story about a man who learns that private ethical lapses have become intertwined with public policymaking. Instead, it's about a man who was unfairly destroyed by a pernicious press for doing exactly the same thing that his predecessors had gotten away with for decades. And that's a much less interesting film. Additionally, due to a poor script, Hart comes across as a blank slate, a cypher onto which the audience can project its own interpretation. Related to this, Reitman asks the audience to take Hart's potential for transformative greatness on trust, never attempting to illustrate any aspect of that potential.

Elsewhere, the film tries to touch on virtually every aspect of the scandal - reporter-editor meetings discussing the moral responsibility of the press; campaign staff trying to fight back against tabloidization; gumshoe reporters hiding in bushes and stalking back alleys; the strain on Hart's marriage; the effects on his alleged mistress, Donna Rice (Sara Paxton). Ultimately, it casts its net far too wide, briefly covering topics that are crying out for a more thorough engagement. For example, at one point, Rice says, "he's a man with power and opportunity, and that takes responsibility." That's a massive statement with serious potential for drama, but the film fails to do anything with it, moving on to cover something else. Indeed, Sara Paxton, despite being in only two scenes of note, gives a superb performance, finding in Rice a decency and intelligence. She's an infinitely more interesting figure than Hart himself.

Given how thematically relevant the Hart story is to the contemporary political climate in the US, especially the increasingly antagonistic relationship between the White House and the media, the script feels bland and overly simplistic. The core of the story is the question of whether or not the press was right to report on Hart's infidelity and the film answers with a resounding "no". However, the cumulative effect is of a scandal skimmed rather than explored, of characters glanced at rather than developed, of controversies summated rather than depicted.