This Runner has too much Hart
The Front Runner (M, 113 mins) Directed by Jason Reitman Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★1⁄2
One of the most memorable TED talks I have ever seen was from Monica Lewinsky. She begins, ‘‘At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss’’, and then burns the house down with her account of being ‘‘patient zero’’ in the then just invented public sport of instantaneous worldwide humiliation.
So maybe Donna Rice was lucky, in a way.
Her public sacrifice on the altar of rescuing an American political reputation came a few years before the world wide web and so she only had to endure months of being exposed in the mainstream media and on every tabloid front cover before she was allowed to disappear from view.
The Front Runner is not Donna Rice’s story. She appears, but is ancillary to the real business at hand; a reappraisal of Gary Hart – the would-be-president with whom Rice was rumoured to have had an affair – and his marriage to his monumentally long-suffering wife Lee.
The Front Runner has an exceptionally strong cast to work with, a compelling story to tell, if done right, and all the bells and whistles of a well-resourced film set to play with.
Hugh Jackman has always had a pretty decent acting muscle and he’s enjoying doing a little dramatic heavy lifting as the aggrieved Hart.
Better yet is Vera Farmiga, doing no wrong as Lee Hart and managing to wring the film’s very
best moments out of an underwritten role.
Around the leads, JK Simmons and Alfred Molina are reliably watchable.
The Front Runner is a film under the impression that it has a need to exist, but I’m not convinced it does, not in this form and with this little insight and excavation anyway.
Hart’s own view of himself and his actions is the script’s default viewpoint. Its central message seems to be that just because Hart couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth about his marriage, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have made a decent president.
And maybe that is so, but cowriter and director Jason Reitman
(Juno) makes a far less convincing case than he seems to imagine. I was left, ultimately, with the impression that the film-makers were not really aware of just how toxic Hart’s behaviour was.
Not so much the affairs, but the apparent belief that as long as noone found out, then nothing wrong had occurred. A more textbook signifier of warped entitlement is hard to imagine.
Jackman does well at conveying the narcissist’s instinct to apologise only after the truth has come out. And then his bewilderment and resentment when the apology – ‘‘Hey, I said I was sorry’’ – is not wanted or accepted and he is left to carry on without the absolution he felt entitled to.
Whether Jackman knew that was what he was portraying, or whether he thought he was giving a performance of a genuinely contrite man who deserved some public sympathy is completely up for debate.
As The Front Runner ends, a title card appears to tell us that Gary and Lee Hart are still married, and have been for 56 years. Well, good for them. No such title appeared to say what became of Donna Rice.
Sometimes the absence of words tells us everything we need to know.
As it happens, Rice went back to her work, but found it impossible to live as before. She vanished from public life for several years, and is now, as Donna Rice Hughes, a prominent and hugely respected activist and campaigner for internet and online safety for children and teens.
Someone should really make a film about her.