“Is there anything worse than an actor with a purpose?” asks an exasperated Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan’s first wife, at the beginning of “Reagan,” the new biopic starring Dennis Quaid.
Well, after watching another two hours of this story, with an admiring look back at the man who served two terms as our 40th president, we can report that there is definitely one thing worse: an actor without a movie.
But let’s not blame the star. Quaid, who has played more than one president, certainly has the charismatic grin, the pomaded hair and, above all, that distinctive, folksy voice – close your eyes, and it sounds VERY familiar. If he were to appear in the role on Saturday Night Live, it would feel like a casting coup on par with Larry David as Bernie Sanders.
But this isn’t an “SNL” skit, despite the fact that Jon Voight appears throughout with a heavy Russian accent as a KGB spy, but we’ll get to that. This is a 135-minute film that requires much more depth. And so to borrow a political statement from Bill Clinton, who Quaid also played: It’s the script, stupid.
Lovingly directed by Sean McNamara with a screenplay by Howard Klausner, “Reagan” opens with a chilling event (and a parallel to a recent one): the assassination attempt on Reagan in Washington in March 1981, just two months after he became president.
There are those who say that Reagan strengthened his relationship with the public by surviving that attempt; he famously said to his wife Nancy from his bed, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” In any case, the filmmakers use the event to set up their story, returning to it chronologically later.
But their first point is that Reagan overcame the shock with a divine plan. “My mother always said that everything in life happens for a reason, even the most discouraging setbacks,” he says. And as he will tell Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, everything from then on will be part of that divine plan.
The even broader point here is that, according to this film, Reagan was actually solely responsible for the eventual demise of the Soviet Union because he showed the people of the world what freedom meant. “I knew he was the one,” says Viktor Petrovich, the retired spy who Voight plays as narrator throughout – by which I mean the one who would bring everything down. The script is based on Paul Kengor’s “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” and Kengor has said that Viktor is based on a number of KGB agents and analysts who followed Reagan for years.
That point is made early and often. The rest is a history movie, with lots of glorious, loving light around our star. We go back to his younger years, learning about his mother and what she taught him about faith, and then to his Hollywood years as an actor, president of the Screen Actors Guild (and a Democrat) before devoting himself fully to politics, and the Republican party.
We also see a newly divorced Reagan meet the endearing Nancy Davis, who will become his second wife, loving partner and constant companion. Like Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller is a fine actor who has little nuance to work with here. Together they walk the path to political stardom, starting with the governorship of California. When they arrive at a neighbor’s house to campaign, the housewife at the door hears Reagan’s “RR” initials and thinks he is Roy Rogers.
But ten years and a change later, Reagan is sworn in as president and begins his eight years in office. “It became my obsession to understand what was beneath the facade,” says Voight’s Petrovich, explaining why Reagan was so consistent.
Maybe he can let us know then?
Because when this film ends, with the president’s death in 2004, ten years after he announced he had Alzheimer’s disease, we know little more than we did when we started about a figure so influential in American politics.
Of course we get all the great hits. ”Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” we see him say in 1987 in Berlin, a scene with a lot of build-up.
And it’s fun to see the famous debate lines, like “There you go again,” for Jimmy Carter in 1980, and of course his famous deft diversion of the age question in 1984, with Walter Mondale. “I will not make age an issue in this campaign,” the 73-year-old president told his questioner. “I am not going to exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience for political purposes.”
The line, which made Mondale himself laugh, got Reagan back on track in the race. The movie, not so much.
“History is never about when, why, how – it always comes down to ‘who,’” says Voight’s Petrovich. Whatever historians think about that, we would have liked to have looked more closely at the when, why, how or anything else that would give us real insight, rather than an extended and glowing commercial, about who this man really was.
“Reagan,” a Showbiz Direct release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association “due to violent content and smoking.” Running time: 135 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
