Reagan Review | Lose One for The Gipper (2024)

Depending on your political leanings and opinions on one of the most divisive presidents in American history, the biopic Reagan is either better or worse than you’re likely expecting, and neither is necessarily a good thing. The best that can be said about this right leaning, faith indebted effort is that – for the most part – Reagan is a classically made, hokey, crowd pleasing biography that plays the legend, but still highlights some of his struggles, shortcomings, and controversies. That’s also the worst that can be said about it, because it’s adherence to the standard biopic playbook is so strong that it has little identity of its own as a film beyond the figurehead it’s depicting.

Reagan opens awkwardly, beginning on the day of 1980s president Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassination (which is awkwardly discussed like it was part of a Communist backed plot, and not the work of a man obsessed with Jodie Foster) and then quickly shifting to modern day Russia and the perspective of Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight), a retired Kremlin insider recounting his admiration and fear of the US leader. Petrovich is the film’s running narrator, which isn’t the greatest choice when screenwriter Howard Klausner (Space Cowboys, The Identical, God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness) and director Sean McNamara (Bratz, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain) are trying to craft a story firmly rooted in the values of God, country, and family values. The intent is to show how even Reagan’s enemies revered the man (which will be a stretch for many to believe), but it only serves to give Voight a chance to ham it up in a performance that lacks dramatic and narrative credibility.

Within this framework, Reagan traces The Gipper’s path to power from his college radio days and time spent as a Hollywood leading man – and a former President of the Screen Actors Guild – all the way to the White House. Reagan is played by Dennis Quaid, who wisely refrains from attempting an outright impersonation of one of the most mocked celebrities in history by playing the man’s inner strength rather than revelling in eccentricities. But in the portions of the film that depict Reagan as a young man, Quaid looks too old, and for the scenes set in Washington, he seems too young. At any rate, Quaid was probably as good of an actor as this project was going to get that could also look somewhat like Ronnie, so it’s hard to fault anything about his overall casting.

The watchword here is reductive, but that’s the case with a lot of biopics that don’t have the time and space to do anything sprawling or overly ambitious. While Reagan did many things during his tenure in various offices and jobs, the film sticks to two primary threads: destroying Communism and a vague feeling that he was placed into power by divine right, not just the political right. Although the film never comes out and talks about the McCarthy Trials in any great detail, Reagan shows the then struggling actor’s attempts to rid the industry of Commie scum as a noble endeavour that had no long lasting consequences for anyone whatsoever. (That’s sarcasm.) That spills over into the Cold War, which is far more effective and on point with its messaging, and also a lot less offensive.

As for the religious aspects of Reagan, they’re both inescapable and tossed off at the same time. There are brief sequences that show Reagan’s relationship to two influential pastors in his life (Kevin Sorbo and Pat Boone), and some discussion of faith between Ronald and his second wife, Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller, who has very little of substance to do, but has great chemistry with Quaid), but Klausner’s script (inspired in part by Paul Kengor’s book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism) goes out of its way to shoehorn in references to the almighty and ruling with divinity that they come across like meaningless dog whistles planted to pop the converted and add nothing to the conversation. Although Reagan was a man of faith, there are better and more meaningful ways of depicting that relationship to God.

Reagan has a degree of B-list star power on display (including Mena Suvari as first wife Jane Wyman, Lesley Anne-Down as Margaret Thatcher, Robert Davi as Leonid Brezhnev, Dan Lauria as frenemy and former House speaker Tip O’Neill, and most bizarrely, Scott Stapp as the most unconvincing Frank Sinatra you’re ever likely to see), and while none of them are perfect fits, they help to lend a production that’s otherwise pitched at the made-for-TV level a thin layer of respectability. There are plenty of hero shots, dodgy hairpieces, a treacly score, and a handful of scenes where Reagan is allowed to have the last word on a situation as if he were delivering a punchline (the entire section devoted to discussing his 1984 defeat of Democratic rival Walter Mondale is predicated precisely on this tactic, and not at all on the then president’s political acumen). This is all about the legend to a point where even Reagan’s notoriously dodgy humanitarian record is held as something that would nominate him for sainthood.

Reagan lays things on pretty thick, but there are some concessions made about his weaker points, and even some topics that flat out court being controversial criticisms. Reagan acknowledges that the president lied, and lays almost the entirety of the Iran-Contra affair at his feet, which is a bold move considering how much the rest of the film seeks to deify him. The film also accepts that Reagan’s specific cult-of-personality brought a great deal of “eccentrics” into the fold, and not all of them were helpful to his image and well being. Also, like many politicians, Reagan was prone to manipulation, exaggeration, and flat out bluffing his way through the presidency, and the film’s depiction of the downsides of leadership are more humanizing than any of the rosier stuff in here. It’s not much, but it is there. Hardened critics of Reagan’s various policies will have to settle for a montage set to Genesis’ indictment of the me-decade, “Land of Confusion.”

Had Reagan done some serious pruning and strictly depicted the president’s tenure during the Cold War, there might’ve been something here. Those portions of the film are slanted historically, but in dramatic terms they’re the strongest elements here. By taking on too much and trying to frame it to meet a contemporary, laudatory vision of Reagan made by modern day Republicans, the film suffers. Not because the whole thing is disagreeable (although it is), but rather because it makes Reagan looks so good in comparison to the current Republican candidate that it boggles the mind how anyone would vote for Donald Trump.

Although Trump’s name stays out of Reagan, it’s clear from the timing and evangelical bent of the production that the producers hope that invoking the name of Saint Ronnie could lead to a groundswell of support. The movie’s not great, but if it’s trying to rally the Republican troops this year, it’s failing. Similarly, it’s not trying to be a serious portrait of a complex man, but instead a basic, stripped down story of an American hero. Without much appeal to either side of the political divide, all Reagan manages to be is a corny, old fashioned biopic about a corny, old fashioned leader.

Reagan opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, August 30, 2024.

Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker fell in love with film growing up across the street from a movie theatre. He began writing professionally about film at the age of fourteen, and has been following his passions ever since. His writing has been showcased at various online outlets, as well as in The Globe and Mail, BeatRoute, and NOW Magazine. If he's not watching something or reading something, he's probably sleeping.