{"id":96857,"date":"2018-12-07T10:51:34","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T17:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gary-hart-movie-revisits-scandal-that-seems-quaint-now-2\/"},"modified":"2018-12-07T10:51:34","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T17:51:34","slug":"gary-hart-movie-revisits-scandal-that-seems-quaint-now-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gary-hart-movie-revisits-scandal-that-seems-quaint-now-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Hart movie revisits scandal that seems quaint now"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hugh
Hugh Jackman stars as Gary Hart in \u201cThe Front Runner.\u201d<\/span>Sony Pictures Entertainment<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a title card says at the beginning of this perceptive, carefully calibrated drama, a lot can happen in three weeks. Adapted by Jason Reitman from Matt Bai\u2019s book \u201cAll the Truth is Out,\u201d \u201cThe Front Runner\u201d plunges viewers into the bewildering jumble of entitlement, idealism, unintended consequences and still-unresolved issues that transformed Hart from a high-minded statesman to tabloid roadkill with dizzying speed.<\/p>\n

This is a film that intends to raise far more questions than it answers, encouraging the audience to emerge from the story with the disquieting notion that even solid moral reasoning can incur a grievous cost. Most confoundingly, it sheds no light on Hart himself: A man who insisted on maintaining his privacy, whose intellect was couched within an aloof, withholding persona, remains a cipher, the missing core of a movie that\u2019s nominally about him, but can\u2019t seem to get a bead on its own protagonist.<\/p>\n

That makes \u201cThe Front Runner\u201d less of an emotional than a mental exercise. Reitman has designed his movie to be an intensely subjective swirl of voices, points of view and densely layered perspectives. Reitman isn\u2019t as interested in Hart \u2013 played in an awkward, subdued performance by Hugh Jackman \u2013 as the vortex of activity around him: The young advisers and volunteers marshaled by campaign manager Bill Dixon (J.K. Simmons), the reporters Hart leads to Red Rocks to announce his \u201ccampaign of ideas,\u201d the cabin in Troublesome Gulch where he lives with his wife, Lee (Vera Farmiga), and their children.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as if the marriage has been ideal: The Harts have separated before, and when he makes a last-minute decision to cancel a trip to the Kentucky Derby to join a Southern fixer named Billy Broadhurst in Florida, no alarm bells go off. But when reporters at the Miami Herald<\/em> get a tip that Hart embarked on an affair on a trip to Bimini, then stake out the candidate\u2019s Washington townhouse for proof, disaster ensues.<\/p>\n

Hart \u2013 equal parts arrogant and naive \u2013 tries to brazen it out, thinking that the old rules will apply. Meanwhile, a new form of TV infotainment feasts on a telegenic scandal, white-shoe newspapers find themselves playing catch-up in unsavory games of innuendo, the Hart campaign implodes and the name Donna Rice becomes a inextricably tied to her era\u2019s biggest \u201czipper story.\u201d<\/p>\n

True to its multifaceted form, \u201cThe Front Runner\u201d is careful to give everyone, especially women, their say about male politicians being held accountable after decades of good-ol\u2019-boy courtesy and cozying up. But Reitman and Bai leave plenty of room for doubt,<\/p>\n

Most profoundly, the filmmakers put Hart\u2019s story squarely in the context of the present, when the norms and traditions that were evolving in 1987 now seem like the quaint artifacts of an era supplanted by a vicious double helix of personal destruction and shamelessness.<\/p>\n

\n

The Front Runner<\/h4>\n

(Playing at the Gaslight)
\n Rating:<\/strong>
\n R
\n Genre:<\/strong>
\n Drama
\n Directed by:<\/strong>
\n Jason Reitman
\n Written by:<\/strong>
\n Jason Reitman, Jay Carson, Matt Bai
\n Runtime:<\/strong>
\n 1 hr. 48 min.
\n Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer:<\/strong>
\n 58%<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jackman stars as Gary Hart in \u201cThe Front Runner.\u201dSony Pictures Entertainment As a title card says at the beginning of this perceptive, carefully calibrated drama, a lot can happen in three weeks. Adapted by Jason Reitman from Matt Bai\u2019s book \u201cAll the Truth is Out,\u201d \u201cThe Front Runner\u201d plunges viewers into the bewildering jumble […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5961,5843],"tags":[1107],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-entertainment","category-living","tag-movies"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96857"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}