“The world will know his name and know the truth,” says the tagline at the end of director Clint Eastwood’s powerful trailer for his latest film, “Richard Jewell.”
Before there was Brett Kavanaugh, before there was Nicholas Sandmann, and before there was Officer Darren Wilson or George Zimmerman, there was Richard Jewell: an innocent man whose life was nearly destroyed when the media and the FBI falsely accused him of domestic terrorism for no other reason than the fact he was a white fat southerner.
Richard Jewell became a national hero during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, when he discovered a bomb planted in Centennial Park. Risking his own life, Jewell successfully helped to evacuate the area, saving countless lives before the bomb detonated. As a result of his heroic feats, only one person died in the blast (a second person later died of a heart attack) while 111 people were injured.
Though first hailed for his triumphant efforts, things quickly turned sour for Jewell the moment the media learned that the FBI was investigating him as a potential suspect, believing he may have planted the bomb himself in order to gain notoriety. As evidenced by the trailer, Clint Eastwood’s film will provide an unflinching look into this horrific three-month nightmare that Jewell endured until the FBI finally cleared him. Christian Toto of HollywoodInToto said the movie will be a “punch in the nose” to the media:
We’ve been wallowing in Fake News long before Donald Trump descended from an escalator to start his presidential campaign.
Media bias is part of the modern news culture. It ‘roided up after reporters felt it was their mission to remove a sitting president, facts be damned.
And Clint Eastwood knows it.
You don’t get to be a movie star for decades, and decades, without a keen sense of the American people. Could that explain why the Hollywood legend is delivering a full-on assault on Fake News at this particular moment?
The Oscar winner’s upcoming film, “Richard Jewell,” does more than show a man wrongly accused of a horrific crime.
The film’s first trailer delivers a smackdown on how the modern media operates.
Spoiler Alert: It’s all about the narrative.
Indeed, it is all about the narrative. At one point in the trailer, a journalist (played by Olivia Wilde) tells her newspaper editor that “Jewell fits the profile of a lone bomber, a frustrated white man who is a police wannabe who seeks to become a hero.” She says this without a lick of evidence to support her claims.
“We’re running it,” her editor says in reply.
They may be speaking about Richard Jewell, but his name could easily be replaced with Brett Kavanaugh, Nicholas Sandmann, or Darren Wilson and the story would be virtually the same.
Based on the 1997 Vanity Fair article, “American Nightmare — The Ballad of Richard Jewell,” the film was written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Billy Ray and stars character actor Paul Walter Hauser as Richard Jewell. Veteran actress Kathy Bates will be playing his mother, with Sam Rockwell as his attorney.