THE FRONT RUNNER : Official Reviews (SPOILERS )

[jo]

From El Planeta del Cine ( Mexico) --

As translated --

El Planeta del Cine.
4 hrs ·
#FICM2018: THE FRONT RUNNER



It's a film directed by Jason Reitman and starring Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga and j. K Simmons.

Follow the story of Gary Hart, an ex-candidate for the presidency of the United States who leaves everything, as intimate things were leaked about his private life and relationships.

Is it worth it?

Yes. The front runner is a good movie that has a surprisingly good mood, it really catches you from the first second that starts and is never boring.

Am I going to sleep?

No, humor starts almost immediately and doesn't stop at any time.

The performances are their strong point, as jackman plasma the real concern and sadness of Gary Hart, having a scene where he shows his skills. Vera Farmiga is still in any role to put it, while j. K Simmons channel a certain kind of Jonah Jameson.

Jason Reitman's address feels a little more fluid, more chord and yes, it's one of his best work to date.

Is there anything wrong?

The Edition. It's one of the things that really isn't good, the edition uses certain shots that don't add up with what the characters are doing on scene.

Verdict?

The front runner is a good movie, entertaining, maybe not a creditor of any prize, but if it deserves to be seen.

Rating: 8.5/10

A better translation of " as Jackman plasma the real concern..."

since Jackman expresses the true concern and sadness of Gary Hart, having a scene where he demonstrates his acting skills

[jo]

The London reviews seem to be converging into one conclusion -- this is a well-made film with outstanding performances!

ohhifilms.com/2018/10/22/the-front-runner/

London Film Festival: The Front Runner
Hugh Jackman stars in a biopic surrounding a sex scandal during the 1988 US election.

by Cameron Howe
October 22, 2018
Comments 0

Director Jason Reitman has already brought us one of my favourite films of the year in Tully. He managed to create something funny, dramatic and real, blending together a great script and a fantastical premise. It was not to be missed and added to the directors already brilliant filmography. This is what excited me for The Front Runner, there is a brilliant cast on board for sure with Hugh Jackman and JK Simmons being two of the big hitters in this, but Reitman as a director always interests me and thankfully, this film does not disappoint.

The film follows Gary Hart, the front-runner (hey! wait a minute) in the 1988 presidential elections. His campaign is destroyed in a matter of weeks when the press, desperate for a story, catch him red-handed in an affair. The Front Runner is one of many impeccable timed films to come out conveniently during a period where we can look and it and say to ourselves “Wow. That looks familiar”. Even more convenient is that Sony decided to make this film one of the first ever to open on an election day in the United States.

And for good reason too, the film calls into question the ethics of the press and the behaviour of candidates going into the highest office in the world. It is like it can’t help but invite the viewer to compare the events with those unfolding in US politics to shame. It manages to make the so-called scandalous affair that happened in the 1980s look like small blips on the resume of what could have made a fine candidate for president by today’s standards.

Reitman and the writers handle these arguments, not only about Hart’s actions but those of the press brilliantly with both sides being presented in a way that will make you think in a way that smaller, less mainstream films fail at almost all the time. For example, I saw another film while in London this year called Non-Fiction. This film covers the same topics, for the most part, mainly focusing on the political aspect. The issue with it is that it didn’t have much to say in terms of an argument and not only that, but it wasn’t woven into the story in an interesting way.



The film anchors all these points with a centrepiece performance in Hugh Jackman. He brings Gary Hart to the screen convincingly. A man who is sick of his personal matters being invaded by the press, he believes there should be a level of privacy for every person and is constantly at odds with the press who believe it is their job to report on his escapades. Jackman is not completely lost in the performance. Sometimes he can take you out of it due to his sheer star power, bringing you to realise you’re just watching him shout about with a bad 80s haircut.


A special note should also be given to the supporting cast. JK Simmons is a scene stealer, even if his character doesn’t appear in the film all that much. He plays the campaign manager, Simmons plays in his signature style of angry, loveable, arsehole. He is treated to some of the funniest lines in the movie and is a delight to see on screen.

Vera Farmiga is also equally fabulous as Gary Hart’s wife. While not given enough of the spotlight to truly shine alone, she is still an important part of the film, showing the effect that all of this media circus is having on the family, and the film does an excellent job of juggling all the pieces including the press and Gary Hart himself.

On a more technical note, the film is gorgeously on the ball with its 80s aesthetic from beginning to end. It opens with a scanned Columbia logo from a film of from the decade, its appearance for the entire film is drenched in beautiful grain because according to IMDb it was shot on 35mm. It feels as if it could have come straight from the decade, the soundtrack complimenting this completely. if you’re willing to look past the stars from the present it could easily pass for it.


The film is some genuinely interesting “Oscar bait” full of great performance, a brilliant script with something to say, all stunningly put together in one brilliant package. I’ve seen some mediocre reactions to the film, so I went in with lower expectations but came out completely surprised at just how good it was. Looking at his last film, maybe that’s the effect Hugh Jackman has now?

Looking at his last film, maybe that’s the effect Hugh Jackman has now?

Has The Greatest Showman ( Hugh Jackman incarnation) become the Jackman template for filmgoers? He dazzles the audience all the time … and Everything he does turns to gold now - LOL!

[jo]

Another Reitman interview for another festival --

www.connectsavannah.com/savannah/the-front-runner-before-bill-and-monica-there-was-gary-and-donna/Content?oid=10603161

Why is the casting of Jackman so important to this film?

Hugh Jackman is one of the greatest movie stars, and one of the greatest actors. No one works harder. Whether he's singing in Les Miz, or clawing his way through Wolverine, no one works harder than Hugh Jackman. He knew specific speeches and specific talking points that weren't even in the script!

We usually think of Hugh Jackman as the man whose heart is leaping out of his chest, an actor whose emotions are so close to the surface all the time. But here, he plays an enigma. He gives you glimpses into Gary Hart. He shows you just enough to make you want to know more.

Hugh does have a boy scout's attitude in approaching a role : "Always Be Prepared".


Ha - he read the monumental novel Les Miserables twice...and even sang some of the songs as went along


Jo

[jo]

Lol- this review sounds more like a lecture, pontification

www.realclearlife.com/movies/gary-hart-scandal-front-runner-forever-changed-politics/


But 3 things I have taken from it --

*Hugh in an against-type performance!

*Reitman is fair, but he seems ultimately to side with Hart

*Despite everything or not, Lee and Gary Hart have just celebrated 60 years of marriage!


Jo

[carouselkathy]

Jo, he also seems to say that this changed politics in the sense that private lives were no longer off limits to the press. How would history have changed if FDR's private life had been revealed in the press? The press turned off cameras when he was being transferred from his wheelchair. He was shown standing behind a podium or sitting in a chair. It wasn't just about marital infidelities.

[jo]

You're right -- there was a change in media coverage perspective.

Jo

[jo]

This assessment of the film and its impact appears in an OP/ED column rather than a Movie Critic Page -- but it is a very fair look at what the movie hoped to achieve ( which partly resonates to current times) --


www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/for-political-theater-candidates-can-t-beat-a-movie/article_30ce7f67-4571-532b-bc32-67653414740d.html

For political theater, candidates can’t beat a movie
By Milan Simonich | [e-mail] 22 min ago


Talk about a political upset.

The best part of the campaign season in Santa Fe had nothing to do with any rally or candidate. A movie stole the show.
The Front Runner, a dramatization of presidential contender Gary Hart’s implosion during one strange week in 1987, provides more insights than any of the high-profile candidates in our midst. And it’s not even close.

From reel life to real life, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Michelle Lujan Grisham plays the part of a pauper. She always pleads for money and always has a looming deadline to get it or, she claims, her television ads will vanish. Wouldn’t that be a pity?

Her opponent, Republican Steve Pearce, spent months running to the center, away from his hard-right record. Now he is emphasizing his party’s old standby of crime and punishment. Pearce tells of drug gangs trying to turn New Mexico into Chicago, whatever that means. Then he drawls, “Not on my watch,” as though he were running for sheriff.



Their race has featured plenty of poll-tested advertising themes and genuine nastiness. We’ve seen it all before.
In contrast, The Front Runner examines how little tolerance America once had for a candidate whose character flaws were exposed. It also reminds us how much deceit is allowed and even celebrated by voters in the era of Donald Trump.

The Front Runner doesn’t go into national release until next month, but it was screened during the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. It’s a more honest account of a politician’s downfall than All the President’s Men.


Hart, who had been a two-term U.S. senator from Colorado, was the best-known and most feared of the Democrats who were angling for the presidency in the 1988 election. He mimicked the mannerisms of John F. Kennedy. Like Kennedy, Hart also had good looks, plenty of hair and a reputation as a womanizer.

I dealt with Hart when I was a young city editor in Colorado. He wore tailored suits with cowboy boots and preferred intellectual discussions to sound bites.

Hart lived with his wife, Lee, in a canyon west of Denver. It was called Troublesome Gulch. The name was a fitting description for what was to come.

One of the the Miami Herald’s political reporters received a tip about Hart carrying on a romance with a younger woman from Miami. The tipster said the woman would fly to Washington for a weekend rendezvous with Hart.

At least some of the tip turned out to be true. Herald staff members staked out Hart’s townhouse, then confronted him about the blond model who had flown up to see him. Intent on making the Sunday edition and warding off Hart’s spin, the newspapermen rushed a choppy story into print.

Hart, then 50, and the woman, 29-year-old Donna Rice, denied they had a sexual relationship. Few believed them.

Hart miscalculated the changing times. He had told a reporter for the New York Times Magazine that those skeptical of his fidelity should put a tail on him. Advance copies of the Times’ story had circulated as the Herald was preparing its surveillance of Hart.

After being confronted by the Miami reporters, Hart was rattled but still thought he could become president.
“This campaign is about the future, not about rumors, not about sleaze,” his character says in the movie.
Hart might have survived today. But in 1987 his candidacy was destroyed in six days.



Reporters had long ignored the sexual affairs of politicians and candidates. All of that changed with Hart.
His honesty and character came into question when the Herald published its story.


The Front Runner, like any feature movie, truncates characters, alters certain events and blurs others. That is the nature of boiling down parts of a life story into two hours of screen time.



But the movie accurately captures the time and the candidate. All the President’s Men succeeded at the box office by twisting the truth about the confidential Watergate source called Deep Throat. The Front Runner is more faithful to real-life events.



Hugh Jackman is so good as Hart that his superhero roles are forgotten. The weak links in the cast are Sara Paxton as Rice and tubby Alfred Molina doing no justice to the journalistic heavyweight he portrays, Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee.


At the film festival screening I attended, one man caught up in other comparisons shattered the theater’s etiquette by shouting, “What about Trump?”

That’s an easy question.

The voters of 1987 wanted answers. Today’s candidates can slide by with generalities, sound bites and outright lies.


Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at [e-mail] or 505-986-3080.

[jo]

TIME Magazine's review is a RAVE!


time.com/5441434/gary-hart-biopic-front-runner/

The Gary Hart Biopic The Front Runner Is a Real Winner


Should a politician’s private life be tabloid fodder? Sony Pictures


By Stephanie Zacharek 6:56 AM EDT


Nearly 30 years before the Access Hollywood tape revealed Donald Trump’s crass misogyny, only to be met with a resounding “So what?” by much of the public, an articulate and serious-minded presidential candidate was forced out of the 1988 race over his suspected marital infidelity. The accompanying visual was striking: a photograph of a former Senator from Colorado, Gary Hart, sitting on a dock in Bimini, with a woman in a white dress–a sometime pharmaceutical rep and actor named Donna Rice–perched on his knee.

That photo emerged more than two weeks after Hart left the race. The truly destructive force had swept through earlier: political reporters from several major newspapers dogged Hart with questions about his “womanizing,” feeling it was their duty to uncover every detail of his personal life. The last weeks and days of Hart’s campaign are the subject of Jason Reitman’s astute and painfully relevant political comedy The Front Runner, adapted from Matt Bai’s book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, and starring Hugh Jackman as the ill-fated Hart. If Hart’s private life held some not-ready-for-prime-time secrets, the behavior of the press covering him was arguably worse: in the movie’s centerpiece, a duo of Miami Herald reporters (Steve Zissis and Bill Burr) stake out Hart’s Washington townhouse, hoping to uncover dirt, later confronting him in the house’s alleyway. Hart stands his ground–Jackman is terrific, channeling Henry Fonda in John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln–but he can’t survive the onslaught.

The scenes between Hart and his wife Lee (played with no-nonsense fortitude by Vera Farmiga) are among the film’s best, exploring what can happen when the private dynamics of a marriage fall under public scrutiny. (The Harts, incidentally, are still married.) Hart’s story marked a shift in the way the press scrutinizes the personal lives of political figures–though as we’ve seen, unethical behavior doesn’t always work against politicians, or even Presidents. Whether you’ve been following politics for three years or 30, you’ll learn something from The Front Runner–but buckle up, because it’s gonna hurt.

Contact TIME Editors about this story at [e-mail].
This appears in the November 12, 2018 issue of TIME.

[jo]

The New Yorker reviews THE FRONT RUNNER --

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/the-fall-of-man-in-the-front-runner-and-outlaw-king

The Current Cinema
November 12, 2018 Issue
The Fall of Man in “The Front Runner” and “Outlaw King”
In both films, the hero doesn’t quite suit the moral path that is laid down for him by the plot.

By Anthony Lane


Hugh Jackman stars as Gary Hart in Jason Reitman’s film.Illustration by Ilya Milstein

Most of the new Jason Reitman film, “The Front Runner,” is set in the late nineteen-eighties, an age that younger viewers will think of as prehistoric. Was there truly an era, they will ask, in which political figures expected us to ignore their private lives in favor of their economic proposals? Seriously? Such, however, was the approach of Senator Gary Hart, who, with one eye fixed on becoming President of the United States, in 1988, couldn’t believe that anyone might care what the other eye was doing.


Hart is played in the film by Hugh Jackman, or, rather, by a brave dialectical struggle between the actor and his wig. By a hair’s breadth, the actor wins. He is part of a strong cast, which includes J. K. Simmons, as Bill Dixon, Hart’s campaign manager, and Vera Farmiga, as Lee, his long-suffering wife. Farmiga was wonderful in Reitman’s “Up in the Air” (2009), but here, at ground level, she has less to work with, Lee’s wistful duty being to smile for the cameras, practice the piano, and, in the matter of her husband’s adventures, look the other way.


In the spring of 1987, Hart, having just stood down as the senator from Colorado, leads the race for the Democratic nomination. Mind you, the movie is more interested in listening to Dixon as he lauds the candidate (“I’ve never known a guy more talented at untangling the bullshit of politics”) than in actually demonstrating that talent. How do you film an untangling? We see Hart on a campaign stop, throwing an axe at a target, then snapping his suspenders for the cameras to prove that he’s a country boy, but he’d clearly prefer to be discussing education. He’s a policy wonk who happens to be cursed with handsomeness, and this perilous mixture accounts for the divided loyalties of “The Front Runner.” Written by Reitman, Matt Bai, and Jay Carson, and adapted from Bai’s book “All the Truth Is Out,” the movie affects to share its protagonist’s contempt for the whole notion of “personality,” while treating him like—guess what?—a movie star.

The trouble begins on a weekend, in Miami, when Hart attends a party on a yacht named Monkey Business. A Miami Herald reporter, Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis), receives a tipoff about Hart’s behavior on the boat. He and two colleagues travel to Washington and stake out the Senator’s town house, lurking in a car across the street, watching a woman come and not go, and eventually confronting Hart in a back alley, where they seem even shiftier than he does. The same bashfulness infects other reporters, including A. J. Parker (Mamoudou Athie), of the Washington Post, who, over hamburgers at a diner, asks the Senator, “Do you feel like you have a traditional marriage?” Later, at a news conference, Parker distills this into the purest and most prying of inquiries: “Have you ever committed adultery?” Shortly afterward, Hart suspends his campaign.

The villain of the piece is the Herald, abetted by the rest of the quality press, which takes one look at a gloopy new mire of mischief and, pausing briefly to hold its nose, jumps right in. And the hero? Well, it’s odd to see Jackman, of all people, tighten his genial features in disgust, whether at himself or at other souls. Alone among our current stars, he would have thrived in the motion-picture business a century ago. You can imagine him clashing swords with Douglas Fairbanks on a staircase, and fans of “The Greatest Showman,” Jackman’s 2017 hit, will need some convincing that deceitful guilt becomes him. Maybe he has too much heart for Hart.


What’s odd about “The Front Runner” is that, aboard the boat, we never glimpse the face of Donna Rice (Sara Paxton), the young woman whose encounter with Hart ignites the scandal, and that the film then continues to withhold her. What is she meant to be: a terrible secret, an ace of spades, a mere detail? At last, she is awarded a few scenes, the most absorbing of which is conversation between her and Irene Kelly (Molly Ephraim), who works for the Senator’s campaign and is deputized to look after her. As the two women talk, openly and Hartlessly, they form a pact of understanding, and you grasp what this movie might have been. Given the upheavals of the past two years, along the fault line between electoral and sexual politics, Reitman could have told the sorry saga from Rice’s point of view—her brush with fame, and her demonization as a temptress, or worse, at the hands of the media. Why must the fall of man, rather than the survival of woman, still be the main event? Can’t we have the business without the monkeys?

[carouselkathy]

It seems that THE NEW YORKER critics can't write a review without some type of snide remark included in the text. Just my observation.

[jo]

This reviewer assigns it a "6" (FAIR) rating, presumably out of 10.


weliveentertainment.com/welivefilm/review-hugh-jackman-staffers-holds-front-runner-together/

[jo]

2.5 stars of 4 -- but an acknowledgement of Hugh Jackman's solid performance!


www.amny.com/entertainment/the-front-runner-review-1.22911752

'The Front Runner' a propagandistic cop-out, despite solid performance by Hugh Jackman

"The Front Runner" tells the story of Gary Hart's failed campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.

Hugh Jackman stars in "The Front Runner." Photo Credit: Sony Pictures
By Robert Levin
[e-mail] @rlevin85
November 4, 2018 7:07 PM



'The Front Runner'
Directed by Jason Reitman
Starring Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons
Rated R



With "The Front Runner," opening on Election Day, filmmaker Jason Reitman gambles that audiences inundated by the supercharged version of the 24/7 political news cycle during the Trump era will seek to escape from it with a movie that takes a quaint look back at its earliest years.

It's hard to know exactly what there is to be gleaned from the story of Gary Hart's failed campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, when he went from favored status in April 1987 to dropout in a matter of weeks, due to allegations that were not a fraction as serious as some of what's been alleged about the current president.

The movie, in which Reitman, journalist Matt Bai and political veteran Jay Carson adapt Bai's 2014 book "All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid," has its own particular ideas of course. It frames the Hart scandal as a Big Bang moment that created the culture which has manifested so vividly in the present, in which politics often seems to be little more than another form of entertainment, a spectacle to be consumed around the clock on television.

"The Front Runner" builds its case credibly, with Reitman offering a subdued and observational approach to chronicling the demolition of Hart's presidential bid amid allegations of an extramarital affair. There is a commitment to realism, to a naturalistic aesthetic that allows scenes to unfold as if you're witnessing a behind-the-scenes documentary, without forgoing a degree of meticulous visual storytelling that gives the picture a convincingly cold, joyless feel.



Hugh Jackman gives a revelatory performance as the Colorado senator that fits with this overall approach, in which his own showy performative instincts are severely restrained behind a veneer of unceasing seriousness. It is perhaps the first time the great, charismatic actor has forcefully looked inward in one of his performances and can be genuinely said to illustrate untapped potential.


Yet there's something seriously off about the way the movie frames the media and its involvement in exposing the Hart story. The notion that the Miami Herald reporters who broke the story (here played as preening, invasive slobs by Steve Zissis and Bill Burr) were somehow overstepping, or too aggressive, by prying into the senator's private life is a dangerous oversimplification at best.

The depiction of the big, bad media as an invasive force that unfairly robbed a good man of his chance to be president — and, by extension, has made it increasingly hard for worthy people to enter the arena — is a propagandistic cop-out and simply too wrong for this moment to ignore.

Hmm... it looks like he didn't particularly like the way media was portrayed?

[jo]

It is perhaps the first time the great, charismatic actor has forcefully looked inward in one of his performances and can be genuinely said to illustrate untapped potential.

Hugh's acting range has been underestimated all this time. Many characterize his past acting perfomances as more of " natural theatrical ebullience" but maybe it is because they have not really seen him portray the full range of acting moments. I do remember one instance in A STEADY RAIN, where Hugh was simply standing to one side while Daniel delivered his monologue. Hugh stood still while looking at some point beyond the stage...as if in very deep contemplation and it was a perfect moment for me watching an actor act in complete silence! I also remember the finale scene when he sat with Daniel on the edge of the stage and reminiscing about their boyhood. As Daniel continued with the dialog, Hugh sat quietly...and all of a sudden, I could see tears coursing down one cheek. It was repeated in several other performances I had seen of the play ( I was lucky to get front/second row seats). I thought of how good an actor he was at that moment!


Jo

[jo]

The New York Times review is out! And the one I dread most to do it ( A.O.Scott)!

Movies
Review: A Sex Scandal Upends a Campaign in ‘The Front Runner’
Image


Sony Pictures
The Front RunnerDirected by Jason ReitmanBiography, DramaR1h 53m
By A.O. Scott
Nov. 5, 2018


Senator Gary Hart’s second presidential campaign began on April 13, 1987, with an idealistic oration amid the natural grandeur of Red Rocks, Colo. It ended a little more than three weeks later in a Denver hotel ballroom with a bitter excoriation of the press and the political process.

Between those two speeches, rumors about Hart’s extramarital escapades — in particular his association with a former model named Donna Rice — overshadowed his efforts to articulate a new agenda for the Democratic Party. The swift collapse of Hart’s candidacy (not including his short-lived, inconsequential attempt to revive it a few months later) is the subject of “The Front Runner,” Jason Reitman’s busy, bossy new film.

A number of recent movies have taken a heroic view of the press, in particular the old-fashioned, printed-on-paper kind. “Spotlight” and “The Post,” for instance, depict journalists as tribunes of civic righteousness. “The Front Runner,” based on a book by Matt Bai, a former writer for The New York Times Magazine, takes a dimmer view of the fourth estate. It belongs to the accusatory tradition of “Ace in the Hole,” “Network” and “Absence of Malice,” movies that see reporters and editors not as guardians of democracy but as barbarians inside the gates of the republic, subverting its values through cynicism, self-importance and mercenary scandal-mongering.


Hart himself, played with sober, dignified charisma and a saving flash of wit by Hugh Jackman, is presented onscreen much as he presented himself at the time: as a serious, cerebral politician uncomfortable with the kind of personal display a modern national campaign seems to demand.



Handsome and thoughtful, the senator is a rugged intellectual, conversant in the minutiae of policy and the grand themes of literature. He lends a reporter his dog-eared copy of “War and Peace.” He scores a clean bull’s-eye at a county fair ax-throwing competition. He has his flaws, though. The question “The Front Runner” poses is whether those flaws, which have less to do with lust than with stubbornness and pride, should have cost the nation the chance of a Hart presidency. Following the argument of Bai’s book, Reitman, who wrote the screenplay with Bai and Jay Carson, depicts his hero as a man struggling to protect his privacy and that of his family against the predatory prurience of the news media.
After a prologue set in 1984, when Hart made an unexpectedly strong primary run against Walter Mondale, the eventual Democratic nominee (defeated by Ronald Reagan in a general-election landslide), the movie starts out as a brisk procedural full of nifty period details and lively, nose-to-the-grindstone performances. Political operatives and reporters smoke cigarettes, whisper into pay phones and drink scotch in bars outfitted with dark wood fixtures and deep-red banquettes. J.K. Simmons, a Reitman staple and a peerless character actor, pockets a handful of scenes as Bill Dixon, Hart’s campaign manager.



Reitman uses Altmanesque sound design and serpentine camera movements to convey the chaos and kineticism of a process in constant, frantic motion. But after a while, once we’ve met the principal players, the speechmaking starts and a potential comedy of political manners turns into a pious, tendentious morality play.

The villain is Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis), a Miami Herald reporter who is in every way Hart’s opposite: slovenly, craven, opportunistic, inarticulate. Fiedler follows up on the rumors about Rice (Sara Paxton) — who met Hart at a party on board a yacht called Monkey Business — and follows Rice herself from Florida to Washington, where Fiedler and his colleagues stake out the senator’s house. Fiedler’s cravenness is also contrasted to the ethical anguish of A.J. Parker (Mamoudou Athie), a Washington Post reporter who pursues the adultery story with reluctance and distaste. (Fiedler is a real person. Parker is a fictional composite, partly based on E.J. Dionne.)


Hart’s frustration bubbles over at times — when he snaps at Parker that reporters should “follow me around”; when he confronts Herald reporters outside his Georgetown brownstone in the middle of the night; when he lashes out at the editor of The Herald during a policy forum in New York — but the real suffering is borne by his wife, Lee (Vera Farmiga). She is the surest magnet for the audience’s sympathy, a woman compelled by her husband’s carelessness (at least) and the press’s insensitivity (at best) to play a role for which she has no appetite.


Lee is also the film’s alibi. Her innocence authorizes its slippery and simplistic handling of complicated themes. A scene in which Ann Devroy, a co-worker of Parker’s (played by Ari Graynor) defends the idea of holding powerful men accountable for their private behavior functions like a “to be sure” paragraph in an op-ed column. Apart from Lee, the women in the movie are either naïve, like Rice, or treacherous, like Irene Kelly (Molly Ephraim), the (fictional) Hart staffer who sells out Rice. In this movie to be a politician’s wife is to be granted a share of tragic nobility. For a woman, to be anything else, above all a professional, is to live in a state of moral compromise.


At various points men, including Ben Bradlee (Alfred Molina) are heard to reminisce about the old days when journalists ignored the sex lives of politicians. This cozy, old-boy arrangement is not explicitly endorsed, but the logic of “The Front Runner” identifies it with the finest traditions of American democracy itself. Those traditions were undermined when Fiedler and his buddies “hid in the bushes” (in Hart’s words) to catch the senator in a compromising position, distracting the public from graver matters.


That moment, according to the original subtitle of Bai’s book, was when “politics went tabloid.” But it is hard to square that notion with either the previous history of American campaigning — see the examples of Grover Cleveland and Nelson Rockefeller, among others — or subsequent events. The death of privacy in the digital age (a theme of Reitman’s similarly misbegotten “Men, Women & Children”) has little to do with newspapers, and politicians have long since learned to survive worse scandals than Hart’s.


“The Front Runner” regards the spectacle of American democracy, which has often been messy, unfair and ridiculous, with high-minded disdain. The film excites our curiosity about Hart’s behavior and then declares it to be none of our business. It scolds rather than illuminates, and prefers the defense of power to the pursuit of truth. That may be its sole claim to relevance.

Wow, this is the first time that A.O.Scott praises a Jackman film portrayal! As for the general review, he seems not to be impressed with Jason and his co-writers adapted screenplay, as he thinks it feels more like a morality play than a film that compels serious debate.


EDIT: It is considered a NEGATIVE review on Rotten Tomatoes.


Jo

[jo]

Hugh scores excellent points in the Vanity Fair review, too!



www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/11/review-sex-secrets-and-hugh-jackman-roil-the-nation-in-the-front-runner

Review
Sex, Secrets, and Hugh Jackman Roil the Nation in The Front Runner
Jason Reitman’s look at a 1980s political scandal is solid, but not as relevant as it wants to be.

by Richard Lawson
November 5, 2018 4:16 pm


Timeliness is difficult to gauge right now. Particularly timeliness of the insistent, clever, political kind—the Twin Towers pale in the background at the end of Munich, say. Because we live in such a specifically clobbering moment, messy and absurd and dreadful—and, most detrimental to timeliness, unique in its flouting of order, of the rules and mores than can connect past to present.

So you’ll forgive The Front Runner, Jason Reitman’s new political period piece opening ominously (hubristically?) on midterm Election Day, if it maybe seems small and ineffectual in its attempts to yoke the story of 1980s presidential candidate Gary Hart to the current beast raging around Washington. Maybe there’s a tidier alternate present day in which we might look at the story of Hart—taken down by media coverage of an extramarital affair, just as he was aimed square at the White House—and say, “Ah yes, past is prologue, this is how we got here.” But in this grim reality, The Front Runner feels quaint, almost a hopeful thing, crafted in the old ways with a pitiable naïveté.


That said, it’s an engaging and well-acted movie, telling a tale of stubborn pride and compromised scruples with weary humor. Hart, a Colorado senator, was the great Democratic hope for 1988, a handsome no-nonsense type who had a radically unadorned approach to politics. He was so practical, in fact, that he and his wife, Lee, had an understanding of sorts about infidelity. That was not something the people of the day, nor our day, were really willing to accept (nor was Hart really willing to admit it), so when an affair with a pharmaceutical rep named Donna Rice came to light, his campaign was fatally derailed.



The Front Runner details the process of all that, from the Miami Herald reporters who broke the story, going so far as to do a stakeout of Hart’s D.C. townhouse, to the campaign staff scrambling to get Hart to realize the thing for the catastrophe it was. Reitman, who co-wrote the script with Matt Bai and Jay Carson, lays the film out in Altman-esque fashion, lots of overlapping dialogue delivered by credibly shaggy people, a docu-realism cut through by dry irony. It’s a pleasant movie about an unpleasant collapse, both of one man’s ambitions and of institutional proprieties.

If the film is a little confused on the institutional part, that’s more of an asset than a flaw. It’s a confusing topic! On one hand, it’s frustrating, maybe even silly, that consensual sex still carries such disproportionate weight in the American moral imagination, and that a newspaper should exploit that for a diverting scoop. On the other hand, a deferential relationship between press and politician has proven to be a dangerous thing over the years. I’d rather have a few politicians outed as philanderers than a press corps totally compromised by an arrangement of convenience masking itself as ethics.


The peril of access journalism is still a needling issue today, so The Front Runner is not about the end of any coziness. Instead it chews on its ambivalence. The film is more on Hart’s side than on the Miami Herald’s, certainly, but Reitman hasn’t made a screed. The Front Runner’s feeling of resignation about the state of the media, the sigh of the movie, is matched by a careful and none too flattering portrait of Hart’s mulish vanity.



He’s played by Hugh Jackman, a great showman here dampening his glow. It’s nice to see him doing something that’s detailed and particulate. He gets one shouty climactic scene, something for the trailer, but mostly reins himself in. It’s a chilly performance, which is an entirely new temperature for the actor. (His Wolverine is all gruffness masking huggable warmth, after all.) Jackman’s recessive, observed work understands the jarring contrast of a guy like this, so stern and upright, being caught on a boat called “Monkey Business.” In Jackman’s hands, the contradictions of Hart begin to feel like some benign-ish example of the contradictions of so many in politics, poses of selflessness and principle clashing awkwardly with the proclivities of private human life.



Jackman has a strong support team. Vera Farmiga plays Lee with her usual calm command. J.K. Simmons, Alex Karpovsky, Ari Graynor, and a terrific Molly Ephraim are among the campaign staffers and journalists wrestling over Hart’s legacy. Ephraim has an especially good, and sad, couple of scenes with an effective Sara Paxton, who plays Donna Rice. It’s a relief that this film, largely about a man doing damage control, stops at least for a little bit to consider the woman implicated in it all.


I suppose the argument to be made for the film’s timeliness is that the Hart situation is what gradually inured us to the point that a presidential candidate who admits to sexually assaulting women could still win. That in first trading in cheap titillation and moral outrage, we set ourselves on the course toward indifference. In the age that we’re in, though, it’s hard to stomach an even mild suggestion that it was a better day when the secret lives of powerful men were safely protected by a system of discretion.


In order to assert its true strength, The Front Runner asks that we do the requisite thought experiment, gaming out the course of the American narrative had Gary Hart become president. Maybe then no Bill Clinton, so no Hillary, either. Or maybe them, just at a different time. Does Barack Obama still come into play? And if not him, does Donald Trump ever appear? What purpose has public prurience—so vexing to The Front Runner—come to serve in a world with no pee tape?


That’s fun and glum stuff to think about. But a bus crash could just as easily have destroyed that imaginary time line as Hart’s sex scandal did. Which makes The Front Runner feel less consequential than it wants to. Reitman has still made an interesting film. It’s just that, from this vantage point, everyone in it seems snared in such obvious entropy. Maybe that’s the insidious power of the moment, that it has made itself feel so inevitable. It’s unsurprising, then, and a credit to Reitman’s craft, that part of me wanted to linger in The Front Runner’s past. How strange that we could ever have cared so much. And how strange that we could ever have cared so little.

[jo]

Deadline.com ( Pete Hammond) has positive praise for the movie and even calls Hugh's performance as Oscar-worthy!

deadline.com/video/the-front-runner-review-hugh-jackman-gary-hart-1988-presidential-race-vera-farmiga-jason-reitman/

Film
‘The Front Runner’ Review: Hugh Jackman Is Winning As A Losing Presidential Hopeful Caught Up In Tabloid Sex Scandal

by Pete Hammond

November 5, 2018 2:28pm

Reviews
Hugh Jackman
Jason Reitman


Even though it deals with a presidential race that took place 30 years ago, and a candidate whose campaign lasted only three weeks, new film The Front Runner could not be more pertinent or important in terms of today’s politics. Perhaps that is why Sony Pictures is taking the unprecedented step of beginning its theatrical runs on Election Day. Even the television commercials for it are including information on how you can vote. So what makes this film featuring Hugh Jackman — in a strong and unexpected dramatic turn as Sen. Gary Hart, who was considered a sure thing for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 before being set up by a tabloid determined to out him for having an extramarital affair — so right for these times?



Director Jason Reitman and his co-screenwriters Jay Carson and Bai use the story of the derailing of Hart’s young presidential bid as a parallel to all that politics in the Donald Trump era seems to have become. As I say in my video review (click the link above to watch), the story The Front Runner wants to tell essentially is the moment the tabloids started to take over politics and the rules of running for office in America. Hart, a senator from Colorado, had been through it before by dipping his toes in the 1984 presidential race and even before that as George McGovern’s manager when he ran in 1972. But those were different times, and now whispers of an affair with a young woman named Donna Rice were not going to go unnoticed, especially when so-called news organizations sense reader interest in the private lives of those who serve us.


Hart, on the other hand, is portrayed as a gifted candidate — a person with strong ideas for how to bring the country forward but also one who believes his private life is of no importance in terms of his career and political ambitions. He’s in a quandary, and after a Miami newspaper essentially ambushes him outside of his apartment where Rice was seen going in, but not coming out, comes the beginning of the end of his run for the presidency as eventually it also gets the attention of legitimate news organizations including the Washington Post. There is a particularly sharp scene in a restaurant where a Post reporter AJ Parker (nicely played by Mamoudou Athie) is cautiously but pointedly turning what Hart thought was to be an interview about issues into one probing his marital fidelity. It’s a brilliantly played chess game by both Jackman and Athie and effectively closes the door on whatever agreements previously existed between political figures and the mainstream press regarding their private lives. It led to the era we live in now, where the gloves come off in spectacular fashion, but also one in which scandal, at least in the case of Trump, doesn’t seem to have any effect at all, at least not yet. For Hart it was a game changer because he simply couldn’t accept the fact that his personal life was something that should be on the table.



All of this is the crux of this film based on Matt Bai’s book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, but Reitman also is interested in the mechanics of a campaign, what is really behind someone like Gary Hart — and in that respect, this is a political film reminiscent of some of the best examples of the genre like 1972’s The Candidate with Robert Redford. As in that film the camera always is finding interesting things going on that might not be front and center. The Front Runner has an urgency and energy to it, and Reitman’s approach captures that.


Related
Sony Touts Politically Relevant Biopic ‘The Front Runner’ – The Contenders LA


Although the acting honors belong largely to Jackman, who is a revelation and perfection as the complex Hart and really getting the nuance in so many scenes, but the supporting cast is equal to him. Vera Farmiga is excellent as Lee Hart, the wife caught up in all the crosshairs of this tabloid nightmare consuming her husband, and J.K. Simmons is his usual solid self as his campaign chief. Katilyn Dever is touching as Hart’s daughter, Andrea, and though her screen time is brief, I was very impressed with the three-dimensionality that Sara Paxton is able to bring to her portrayal of Rice.
American audience might be over politics after Tuesday, but no matter what happens The Front Runner is worth seeing for a number of reasons — not the least is Jackman’s Oscar-worthy turn. Producers are Reitman, Helen Estabrook and Aaron L. Gilbert. After opening Tuesday in select theaters, Sony Pictures will expand the film throughout November.


Do you plan to see The Front Runner? Let us know what you think, and don’t forget to vote.

[jo]

It's Thumbs-Up for the movie and Hugh Jackman's portrayal for NewsDay --


www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/front-runner-review-1.22943154

EntertainmentMovies

'The Front Runner' review: Hugh Jackman stars as Gary Hart in a solidly crafted political drama


By Rafer Guzmán
[e-mail]
Updated November 5, 2018 5:00 PM

PLOT An extramarital affair undermines the 1988 presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Gary Hart.
CAST Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons
RATED R (language)
LENGTH 1:53
PLAYING AT Regal Union Square 14 and AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 in Manhattan. Expands wider beginning Nov. 16.


BOTTOM LINE Jackman excels as a deeply flawed hero in this drama about a bygone political era.

Jason Reitman’s “The Front Runner” revisits what now seems like a long-ago turning point: When a politician’s sexual life became inseparable from his public life. The year is 1988, and Democratic Senator Gary Hart (Jackman), is leading a highflying presidential campaign -- one he is forced to abort when The Miami Herald runs a story suggesting he is having an affair.

Hart, disgusted by the low-stooping media, wants to ignore the story. “The public doesn’t care. They won’t put up with it,” he says, but his campaign manager, Bill Dixon (J.K. Simmons), feels the climate changing. “This isn’t ‘72,” he says. “It’s not even ‘82.”

Ah! If only it had been ‘98, when Bill Clinton successfully fought impeachment despite having turned the Oval Office into “The Apartment” with an intern. Better yet, if only it had been 2018, when a sitting president could shrug off accusations of sleeping with an adult film actress who was paid by his own lawyer to keep quiet. “The Front Runner,” timed for release on Election Day, wants to show that Hart was the first casualty of a newly invasive press. It may be, though, that he simply caught an ever-changing, unpredictable public at the wrong moment.


Either way, “The Front Runner” is a solidly crafted political drama with a fine cast, notably Jackman, in a rare human-scale role with room for complexity and nuance. The film’s best moment comes when Hart confronts the Miami Herald reporters who have been watching his home for strange women; as their embarrassment gives way to a giddy realization that they’ve nabbed a story, Hart’s outrage begins to crumble. Sara Paxton, as Donna Rice, Hart’s alleged mistress, conveys a pitiable naiveté; Vera Farmiga, as Hart’s dignified wife, Lee, gives the film its center of moral gravity.

Based on the book “All the Truth Is Out,” by Matt Bai -- who wrote the screenplay with Reitman (“Up in the Air”) and Jay Carson (a former staffer for both Clintons) -- “The Front Runner” still doesn’t feel like the full scoop on the Hart-Rice story, probably because both parties have revealed so little about it publicly. Perhaps unintentionally, the film works best as a cynical lesson: If Hart had simply abandoned his sense of shame and propriety, he might have become president yet.

[jo]

The Wrap review (POSITIVE on Rotten Tomatoes) --

www.thewrap.com/the-front-runner-film-review-hugh-jackman-gary-hart-jason-reitman/

‘The Front Runner’ Film Review: Hugh Jackman Is Gary Hart in Jason Reitman’s Enjoyable, Slight Political Saga

Hart’s implosion over infidelity allegations in 1988, setting up the tabloidization of politics, makes for a snappy if thin dramatization

Robert Abele | November 5, 2018 @ 8:34 AM
Last Updated: November 5, 2018 @ 8:41 AM



To dramatize the scandal-ridden ups and downs of the current presidential administration is to consider all manner of genres: Python-esque satire, journalism drama, social-issue tragedy, gilded ’80s-style sex thriller, even dystopian mind-screw. Is it even possible to tell the story of a rise and fall like Gary Hart’s — smart politician felled by a combination of personal arrogance and journalistically exploited national prurience — without the whole thing seeming morally quaint, like storybook time during a home invasion?


The answer is no, albeit an entertaining no, if the example is Jason Reitman’s “The Front Runner,” his self-consciously on-point, briskly enjoyable version of the three weeks in 1988 that took the Colorado senator from shoo-in for the Democratic presidential nomination to ousted cautionary tale after allegations surfaced regarding his extramarital affair with Donna Rice. The film’s assets are like an attractive party platform for discerning moviegoers: wonderful actors (Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons), crisp dialogue, and agreeable suspense regarding its thriller elements and emotional hand-wringing.


So why does the overall package, adapted from political reporter Matt Bai’s non-fiction book “All The Truth Is Out,” stop short of feeling like a necessary slice of turning-point history, and more like something you think “nice job” about? Perhaps because in giving the jump-around view — introducing us to not just Hart (Jackman) and family, but campaign staff, and reporters from a handful of newspapers — the effect is of a scandal skimmed, rather than explored.


Opening with the 1984 campaign that first gave voters a taste of Hart’s fiery idealism (“the world changes when young people give a damn”), Reitman simultaneously promises an Altman-like tapestry, offering a focus-shifting, layered-sound long shot that dips in on various wisecracking Hart staffers at the Democratic convention that year. When we pick up the story four years later, and Hart’s primary season bid is stronger and more strongly covered, the tension inside the campaign between Hart and his manager, Bill Dixon (Simmons), is between an intellectual candidate who doesn’t understand why hair, personality, and barbecues are important, and an exasperated handler who knows fully well that great ideas aren’t enough anymore in the TV age.


Hart, whose relationship with his smart wife Lee (Farmiga) has an air of professional warmth, is comfortable trading barbs and hashing out policy and high-minded ideas with the press; he even gives one feature Washington Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie, “Patti Cake$”) a Tolstoy novel. But when Miami Herald reporter Thomas Fiedler (Steve Zissis, “Togetherness”) receives a tip about possible Hart infidelity, he ignores decades of unwritten Fourth Estate courtesy about the private lives of public figures — what kept Kennedy’s womanizing, among countless others’, out of the papers — and stakes out Hart’s DC home. The resulting expose of clandestine activity put character front and center, controversially and irrevocably.



The movie’s DNA is a mix of “The Candidate” and “All the President’s Men,” as evidenced by the nostalgic grain in Eric Steelberg’s cinematography, and editor Stefan Grube’s focus on performance rhythms over story flash. But those earlier bellwether films had sturdier, more focused points of view. (In each case, they belonged to Robert Redford’s learning-on-the-job character.) “The Front Runner” is entirely theme-driven, and wants to touch on everything about the Hart story: reporter-editor huddles about press responsibility (at two different papers, no less, including Alfred Molina as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee), inside-campaign strategies to fight tabloidization (well-acted by the young supporting cast), and a marriage’s fractures (in which Farmiga’s reactions are expectedly powerful). Yet what gets lost in Reitman’s efficient patchworking is an abiding dimensionality.


It leaves some strange gaps amidst the Greek chorus of witty exchanges and pressurized confabs, amusingly delivered by Chris Coy (“The Deuce”), Alex Karpovsky (“Girls”), and Josh Brener (“Silicon Valley”) as the core of Hart’s crew. On the one hand, there’s a welcome female-centric subplot in which young campaign scheduler Irene (Molly Ephraim, “Last Man Standing”) and a scared Rice (nicely turned by Sara Paxton, “Murder in the First”) come to terms with how society’s retrograde view of women defines their roles at that moment: appointed babysitter and assumed floozie, respectively. But why, then, does the portrayal of Hart — whose ego is magnetically captured by Jackman — stop at the door to that brownstone?



Bai, who’s credited as co-screenwriter with Jay Carson (“House of Cards”) and Reitman, famously left the question of confirmed marital infidelity out of his book, too. But by the time “The Front Runner” draws understandably time-stopping suspense out of the galvanizing press conference in which Hart is asked about it point-blank, the movie’s central figure lives for us in some weird limbo between lead character and feature player. It’s hard to tell if we’re supposed to bemoan the question, want it, cringe at it, and conversely, whether Hart should answer it, decry it, etc, etc.


Maybe that’s the point, to leave us confused as to whether the new era of the personal in politics is a good thing or a bad thing. But that doesn’t necessarily help illuminate a story that, while momentous for our electoral future, was ultimately lived by people and not by barbed mouthpieces./b]

[jo]

The Los Angeles Times review -- this one is particularly insightful.

www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-the-front-runner-review-20181105-story.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Movies
Entertainment
Review: 'The Front Runner' plays it fast and funny, with a winning Hugh Jackman taking on Gary Hart’s political unraveling

By Kenneth Turan

| Film Critic |
Nov 05, 2018 | 4:05 PM



Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart in the movie "The Front Runner." (Sony Pictures)

In the spring of 1987, U.S. Senator and leading Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart issued a casual challenge that turned out to be one of the most fateful in American political history.

“If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead,” he told a New York Times reporter who’d inquired about rumors of womanizing and infidelity. “They’d be very bored.”

Not quite.

For a coincidence of timing meant that that off-the-cuff remark not only came back to haunt Hart and destroy his career, its consequences continue to bedevil American political culture to this day.

That situation ignited something in filmmaker Jason Reitman and the result is the smart, fast and funny “The Front Runner,” a tip-top piece of entertainment starring Hugh Jackman as Hart and Vera Farmiga as his wife, Lee, that is as significant as it is enjoyable.


With his most ambitious film, Reitman returns to the form of some of his earlier issue-related pleasures, such as “Thank You for Smoking,” his biting film on Big Tobacco, and “Up in the Air,” about American corporate culture.

This time, working from the book “All the Truth Is Out” by political journalist Matt Bai (who cowrote the script with former Hillary Clinton Press Secretary Jay Carson and Reitman), the filmmaker takes on the genie that’s not going back in the bottle, the increased role tabloid journalism has taken in our political discourse.


Despite the potential for rancorous finger-pointing, one of the remarkable things about “The Front Runner” is its determination to be even-handed, to encourage viewers to make up their own minds (at least up to a point) about what happened 30 years ago and what it means for today.

Given that it details a story whose start to finish outline is quite well known, “Front Runner” is also a surprisingly gripping piece of work, with cinematographer Eric Steelberg and editor Stefan Grube deserving a chunk of the credit.
They were foremost in putting into practice Reitman’s decision to both echo Michael Ritchie’s “The Candidate,” one of the director’s favorite films, and structure “Front Runner” a bit like a classic 1970s Robert Altman film, complete with multiple characters, overlapping dialogue and a roving, probing camera.


This is most apparent in the film’s ambitious opening scene, set a few years earlier, and presenting, in a formidable single take, the entire chaotic panoply of political staffers, print journalists and television trucks that surrounded Hart’s San Francisco concession to rival candidate Walter Mondale for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination.
Even then Hart was thinking about the future, telling an aide “in four years they still won’t have an answer to our ideas.”


In fact, as Hart prepares to formally enter the race in 1987 it’s with an impressive lead. Showing how three weeks in April derailed all that is the order of business here.

At the center of what went wrong was a floating party on a boat implausibly called Monkey Business where, in a deftly understated scene, we see Hart lock eyes with the attractive Donna Rice (Sara Paxton). We never see any actual monkey business, and the real-life participants have never confirmed any, but what matters here is not the truth but what happened next.


At the scrappy Miami Herald, reporter Thomas Fiedler (Steve Zissis) gets an anonymous phone tip about the Hart-Rice liaison. Roughly coincidental with the appearance of the Hart quote in the New York Times, Herald reporters fly to Washington to do something reporters had not done before: confront a candidate about his extramarital life.
As structured by Reitman and his co-writers, “Front Runner” alternates its focus between the campaign, the journalists who cover it and the candidate’s family.


Given that both co-writers Bai and Carson have extensive campaign experience, it’s no surprise that “Front Runner” encourages us to feel we’re on the inside, revealing the grind of campaigning, from the specific language and cynical humor to the sheer exhaustion of the enterprise.


If there is a drawback to the film’s methodology, it’s that, with the exception of J.K. Simmons — on point as always as veteran Hart campaign manager Bill Dixon — it is sometimes hard to tell the numerous Hart staffers and the various journalists apart from one another.


There is no such problem with the film’s stars, starting with Jackman, who does excellent, charismatic work presenting Hart as an elusive politician, at times arrogant and thin-skinned but a genuine idealist who wanted to govern and didn’t see why he had to reveal his personal life to do so.


“Front Runner” does equally well with the women in Hart’s life, starting with Farmiga, who brings her formidable presence and skill to the challenges of being a politician’s wife.

Also strong are Paxton as Rice and Molly Ephraim as composite Hart staffer Irene Kelly, two women who end up spending a lot more time together than they planned.

“Front Runner” treats Rice with respect as a bright, ambitious if somewhat naive young woman and her scenes with Kelly, deputized to wrangle Rice after all hell breaks loose, are especially strong.


Having this much focus on a candidate’s private life was unprecedented and a turning point in how we cover politicians. Did the Herald and everyone else overstep media boundaries or was the information sought an essential key to character?
“Front Runner” is careful not to seem to be taking sides with this question. The portrayal of Fiedler and his Herald cohorts leans toward opportunism, but A.J. Parker (Mamoudou Athie), the composite reporter who asks Hart about adultery at a press conference, is treated with respect. It’s up to us to decide which side to take.

Given that “Front Runner” opens on election day, the film also encourages audiences to ponder how the Hart-stopping change in media behavior has impacted politics. Do today’s successful candidates need increasingly stellar morals as a result of what happened, or are they simply more adept at being celebrities and surviving the waves of character assassination?


Hart, more prescient than successful, seemed to see it all coming. “Politics in this country — take it from me,” he said in his 1987 withdrawal speech, “is on the verge of becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match.” It’s hard to argue with that.

-------------

[jo]

Another favorable review --

nypost.com/2018/11/05/hugh-jackman-gives-his-best-performance-ever-in-the-front-runner/

[jo]

While this review presents a Negative view of the movie --

film.avclub.com/opening-on-election-day-the-front-runner-is-the-absolu-1830229330

[jo]

The CNN critic views the movie positively and praises Hugh Jackman's anchoring presence --


edition.cnn.com/2018/11/06/entertainment/the-front-runner-review/index.html

[jo]

Quite an insightful review -- from the filmmaking and historical references view.


www.westword.com/film/bohemian-rhapsody-rocks-but-rolls-over-queens-magic-moments-10934980

[jo]

Thumps-down from RogerEBert.com ( C Lemire as critic) -- and not impressed with Hugh Jackman's portrayal either!

www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-front-runner-2018

[jo]

A positive review, noting the resonance to real-life politics of today.


www.flickfilosopher.com/2018/11/front-runner-movie-review-politics-turned-tabloid-lff2018.html