Can’t-miss story a little out of focus
What we have in “The Front Runner” is a strong hand played poorly. The basic story is inherently interesting: In 1987, Gary Hart was the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination when a sex scandal ended his prospects and forced him to withdraw from the race. “The Front Runner” tells that story, but imprecisely and from a series of weak angles.
The movie’s central premise is debatable, though we can grant it, if only for the sake of letting the story proceed: Were it not for the scandal, Gary Hart would have been elected president. Well, maybe. But keep in mind. Ronald Reagan won 49 states the previous cycle, and George H.W. Bush went on to win 40 states in 1988. The economy was booming. The world situation was stable, and improving. Hart might have made it closer — maybe — but it’s a huge stretch to present him as a sure thing.
The movie begins with Hart’s loss of the Iowa caucuses in January 1984. Then he goes to a bar to commiserate with his staff, seemingly on the same night, except suddenly it’s the summer of 1984, and Geraldine Ferraro is on TV, accepting the nomination for vice president. That was quick. Then “four years later” is flashed on the screen, and guess what? We move ahead
less than three years to the spring of 1987, and someone is telling Hart’s daughter that a year from now, she might be living in the White House. Great, except Reagan would still be president until January 1989.
Does this stuff matter? In a true story about a presidential campaign, yes, it does. Likewise, it matters when hardened staffers, presumably experts on presidential history, banter about Theodore Roosevelt and the origin of the “teddy bear” and get every single fact wrong. Or when Hart, in a debate, talks about the collapse of the Soviet Union, four years before it happens. At the very least, it indicates a laziness with the material, which will manifest in other ways throughout the movie.
Hugh Jackman plays Hart, lending the Colorado senator more magnetism than he ever had, while capturing his steely focus and rigidity. As would be the case with Bill Clinton four years later, there were rumors of infidelity surrounding Hart from the outset, but he thought he could just steamroll through them, insisting that his private life was nobody’s business but his own.
In excruciating slow motion, the wheels start coming off when the Miami Herald, acting on a tip, camps outside Hart’s Washington town house and sees a young woman enter the building, presumably for a romantic tryst. The reporters confront Hart on the street, and the scandal begins.
But this is typical of “The Front Runner”: The movie follows the reporters when following Hart would be more engrossing, and it follows Hart when following the reporters would make a lot more sense. As it is, we never really know what went on inside the town house, and we never even get to see a re-creation of the famous photo, in which a young woman, Donna Rice, was photographed sitting on Hart’s lap. Was this a real affair? Was Hart set up? Audiences will come away knowing less about the affair, if there was an affair, than they’ll know walking into the theater.
We can anticipate director Jason Reitman’s justification for this: “The Front Runner” isn’t about the events that forced Hart out of the race, but rather about media history, that is, the moment when the press decided it was open season on candidates’ personal lives. Fine, but the movie doesn’t really explore that issue, either.
Specifically, it doesn’t say why that suddenly happened; nor does it make a persuasive case that this was indeed a sudden, not gradual, change in press policy.
In any case, if you have a fascinating story sitting adjacent to a mildly interesting story, and you choose to focus on the mildly interesting story, you’d better figure out a way to transform the mildly interesting story into something equally fascinating. Otherwise, the audience will come away dissatisfied, and you’ll end up with a movie like “The Front Runner,” a near-miss, but a miss all the same.
Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle’s film critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle