Review: Reagan (2024)
When I was covering the Republican National Convention in July, I got a firsthand view of the disconnect between the party’s self image of itself and the society around it. Milwaukee is a predominately blue city. Walking around the security fence, I noticed that dozens of Reagan posters had been torn down and littered the streets—likely by local pedestrians. I couldn’t tell exactly why they’d been torn down, but it was clear they didn’t appreciate the convention’s intrusion into their daily lives.
The blue didn’t like affirmative positions from the red. This tension has been over the past two weeks since the release of Reagan. The independently produced ($25 million budget) Dennis Quaid biopic is the latest film caught in a massive gulf between critics and conservative audiences, with Rotten Tomatoes critics trashing the film (18%) and audiences pouring love upon it (98%).
I was recently asked about this divide between audiences and critics by a reporter from The Washington Times and gave a fairly measured statement as to why. “It’s no secret that progressive critics aren’t going to be enamored by a Ronald Reagan biopic,” I said in a statement. “Despite being the most popular elected president in living memory, he’s still got a negative reputation in Hollywood and among the left. I wouldn’t say that critics are necessarily brigading the film on principle. Their worldview will definitely affect their analysis, but most of them are willing to admit when a conservative film is good. Reagan has genuine filmmaking and screenwriting problems that make it easy to dismiss.”
That said, It’s not hard to figure out why the film is successful. Movies are personal things. As I watched the film last Thursday afternoon, I was joined in the theater by my grandfather, an elderly conservative who regularly calls President Reagan one of his personal heroes. The whole experience of seeing his hero on the big screen was intensely unique and personal to him, especially toward the last ten minutes when Reagan’s Alzheimer’s comes into focus. He had lost his wife to that disease five years ago. The entire experience proved overwhelming and he spent those final minutes wiping tears out of his eyes with a theater napkin. His reaction was a good reminder that films like this, though severely imperfect, are filling a gaping need in our cultural mythology. People wouldn’t be tearing down movie posters if the mythology of Ronald Reagan didn’t mean something.
Admittedly, the final product is overall a messy experience. It’s stilted, awkwardly shot, and undercooked. The movie rushes through five decades of history with abandon and doesn’t let major events sink in. Many key moments of Ronald Reagan’s life are presented without context while his darker moments are smoothed over quickly. The majority of its story is exposited directly by Jon Voight playing a Soviet agent reflecting on the glory of Reagan. The film as a whole has largely been attacked for its hagiography, with its glowing portrayal of the president sitting somewhere between Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kincaid in its glaring sentimentality.
Progressive critics aren’t alone in criticizing these issues. As fellow conservative critic Kyle Smith writes, “the new Reagan biopic is basically a cheesy made-for-TV-style effort.” National Review editor Jack Butler agreed, saying it “doesn’t even succeed as propaganda, as it doesn’t know how to transmit its message or even what that message really is.”
And yet, this hasn’t stopped the film from grossing a cool $19 million through strong word of mouth. The crowd that trashed those movie posters wasn’t going to show up for it, but there's definitely an audience for this sort of movie.
Texting with one of my colleagues after the screening, I gave a few acerbic remarks on the film, calling it a C- movie with 3-4 B+ dramatic scenes that consistently brushes up against a better version of itself. That said, the glow of the movie did strike me several times while watching it. The movie actually plays like an indie remake of Goodfellas, with narration and lengthy montages across decades, and needle-drop music cues. ts vast crowds of extras and CGI usage, along with some clever edits and shots, heightened the experience. It felt like Hollywood had actually made a legitimate drama about President Ronald Reagan—which is something that seemed impossible for decades. I began to admire the thing beyond what it was.
From a screenplay level, the story of Reagan plays out like a drama of consciousness. A young Ronald Reagan is shown growing up in Dixon, Illinois, and receiving a clear moral education that imparts upon him a morally uncompromising worldview. There is good and evil in the world and they must be correctly identified. Half the film’s drama is just about how hard the world makes it to succeed when you refuse to compromise. In the end, he’s partially rewarded with the political success of seeing the Soviet Union’s destruction, undercut by the realities of his tragic decline from Alzheimer's disease as he rides off into the sunset.
This portrayal is certainly one of the most conservative film premises in years, and it does work in generating some very powerful scenes. However, such a portrayal does raise concerns. President Reagan has become the poster boy of boomer conservatism among the dissident right. We are just coming out of a controversial news cycle relitigating the morality of mythologized historical figures like Winston Churchill, due in part to Paleocons wanting to move away from the postwar American consensus that Reagan helped solidify.
It’s all too easy for both conservatives and progressives to dismiss Reagan. However, as Michael Knowles rightly points out, “myths constitute our basis for cultural identity.” Mythologizing makes things harder to question, but it is also inevitable. “However the mythology changes, we have to take our own side.” President Reagan is a good myth, if only because he’s a model for success that shows America at its best, and people idolize him for it. While I certainly hope future films do better, Reagan is a good start.