J. Edgar

Director Clint Eastwood ("Million Dollar Baby," "Hereafter") and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black ("Milk") take on one of America's most powerful historical figures with the biopic "J. Edgar," raising important questions about liberty and government along the way but also, regrettably, fumbling the film's gay undercurrents.

John Edgar Hoover, of course, was the tyrannical director of the FBI for decades. He understood the value of information, from the forensic (clues at debris-strewn crime scenes) to the scandalous (Hoover assembled extensive files on everyone from potential criminals to political rivals to presidents and first ladies). The film depicts him as a driven, brilliant man with a vindictive streak, and Leonardo DiCaprio turns in a scorching performance.

Given to bullying, J. Edgar was tormented by what was, at the time, a terrifying and shameful secret. He was a gay man in a world where gay men were constantly in legal, economic, and physical peril.

There's no shortage of forensic evidence in this movie for what made Hoover such a control freak, and such a brusque power player. His domineering mother (played here forcefully by Judith Dench) spurs him on, and assures him that she'd rather a son of hers were dead than queer. There's a hint of a childhood speech impediment, which Hoover seems to have conquered through force of will. Hoover was short of stature, and self-conscious about it.

But the most crucial ingredient of all is the gap between the public persona Hoover projected and the truth of his innermost self. The film gives us plenty of both: When dealing with subordinates--and even with superiors--Hoover is utterly in control. He's offered an important job in one scene, and he responds with a list of conditions that he needs to have met before he'll accept.

But when Hoover meets Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, "The Social Network") a different man can be glimpsed under the prickly and controlling demeanor. Hoover pursues Tolson as a recruit for the Bureau of Investigation, despite Tolson's lack of qualifications; when he offers Tolson a spot on his team, Tolson responds with conditions of his own, insisting that the two should lunch and dine together every day without exception. Hoover responds the way his own superior did, saying he wouldn't have it any other way.

Tolson is in many ways Hoover's exact opposite and complement. He's coolly self-possessed, whereas Hoover is something of an abrasive hothead; he's aristocratic in bearing in contrast to Hoover's scrappy knot of confrontational attitude. Most importantly, Tolson serves as Hoover's conscience.

Hoover needs a conscience. He's so single-minded that he easily overlooks the finer points of the job (such as staying inside the letter of the law) and so determined to win over hearts and minds in making the FBI a premiere law enforcement agency that he panders to the public, resorting to comic books to spread pro-Bureau propaganda. (This draws skeptical Congressional scrutiny, but it works: A new generation grows up to revere the FBI, and movies shift from celebrating gangsters to lionizing G-Men.)

The movie traces Hoover's evolution from an underling that the secretaries in the typing pool deride to a master of politics, PR, and crime fighting. To keep things narratively cohesive, much of the film centers around one of the 20th century's most notorious cases: The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, which is related in a series of flashbacks as an aged Hoover dictates his memoirs.

The crime is solved with systematic, methodological precision, and Hoover is the innovator who leads the way, but he has to fight for the resources (and the respect) he needs. It's a dilemma, and probably a familiar one in the history of national leaders: For every visionary new crime fighting tool and technique Hoover introduces (forensics labs, fingerprinting as a means of identifying and tracking criminals), there seems to be an ethical lapse driven in part by Hoover's overwhelming need for fame and adoration, and in part by pure pragmatism.

The memoir-and-flashback thing is a rusty, but trusty, narrative device, but it opens the door to temptation on the part of the makeup department. In the case of "J. Edgar," the wrinkles are piled on so thickly that the actors, especially Hammer, seem mummified by latex rather than worn down by time.

In other ways, this is a highly competent, even artful, film. The movie's psychological elements are well balanced with its historical account, and the blend of action and drama is effective. Moreover, Eastwood's camera is dynamic, the editing flows with real energy, and the film's look is cleverly tweaked for the various periods in time in which it unfolds: The more remote the flashback, the more attenuated the colors and the closer we are to black and white.

There's also more than a hint of social commentary here. Hoover vastly expanded the power of the federal government and its ability to police dangerous elements, but it could be argued that he also diminished the rights of American citizens, with spying and dirty tricks becoming part of the peacekeeping arsenal. How will the Tea Party respond to such a portrayal?

All of those nuances risk being washed away, however, by the film's ham-handed treatment of J. Edgar's homosexuality and his relationship with Tolson. If there are hints of present-day distrust of the government here, then it's equally true that there's more than a little Tim Gunn in this version of Hoover's right-hand man, who is always good for a fashion tip.

Then there's a relationship-defining fight that breaks out when the two men go on vacation together and Hoover lets slip that he's considering courting an actress. Glasses are smashed, fists deployed, and hysterical shouts given vent. Then, of course, there's a frantic kiss. It's all played with a humid intensity that verges on farce, and it's hard to know whether we're meant to laugh at the scene or feel the suffocating confines of the closet closing in. The scene evokes both responses, and it's more than a little bewildering. Most of all, it feels like a straight man's interpretation of a gay relationship in crisis.

Still, we get the idea. Hoover and Tolson are devoted to one another, and if they seem like an old married couple by the film's end, that's because in an emotional sense that's exactly what they are. But the actors don't seem to know how to pull it off, and the director seems equally mystified. It's hard to judge the merits of Black's screenplay, because if handled differently the material might have seemed much more natural and realistic, as it does when addressing power plays between Hoover and various important figures like RFK (Jeffrey Donovan) and Richard Nixon (Christopher Shyer). (Both of those roles, incidentally, were terribly miscast).

Some will slam the movie for acknowledging Hoover's homosexuality, and making the pain of a life lived in the closet so central to the film's emotional drive. Others will no doubt take issue with the movie's suggestion that Hoover's famed cross-dressing was limited to a single instance in which he dons his mother's gown and necklace in a spasm of grief at her death. (The scene is done respectfully and in much better taste than many of the interactions between Tolson and Hoover.)

The real shame, though, is that these are the issues that will define how the film is perceived. The proper thrust of the film ought to have been Hoover's role in shaping an ongoing legacy (and playing a role in the perpetual debate) of how liberty and security are balanced against one another--a deep, uncomfortable, and inescapable duality that's as compelling as Hoover's own divided persona.

Overall, this is a well-produced movie, but its considerable flaws might consign it to a closet of its own--that of well-intentioned, but justifiably forgotten, cinema.