Our 40th President remains something of a cipher: Ronald Reagan was a small-town boy turned movie star, union leader, and a politician whose folksy demeanor in the Oval Office contrasted with the furthest-right economic and national security policies in decades. It’s still unclear whether the man nicknamed “The Great Communicator” was good at making complicated issues seem simple or whether he really thought in simplistic terms. “Reagan,” with Dennis Quaid as the President, is made by MJM Entertainment Group, which specializes in films with Christian themes. It exaggerates Reagan’s strengths and skips or minimizes his limits, mistakes, and failures.
A biographical film about a historical figure must tell the story of a consequential life in a couple of hours. So the framing and selection of key events are critical. Oddly, this story is presented from the imagined perspective of a Soviet spy who, in the world of this movie, spent decades watching Ronald Reagan, becoming his most ardent admirer.
I would never tout myself as the expert on Reagan’s presidency (a position the spy plays in this film), but I worked next door to the White House as a lawyer during the Reagan administration, in a division of the Executive Office of the President. I met the President and First Lady just once, but I prepared briefing materials for him, and several of the political appointees I worked with met with him regularly. Even for those who have not had that experience, even for those who were not born when he was President, the relentless hagiography of this film should make anyone question its credibility. One-sidedness makes for dull filmmaking, and the clunky dialogue and awkward pacing make watching it a slog.
Many biographical films begin with a lifetime turning point before going back to the early years. This film begins with Reagan in the early months of his Presidency, telling a joke to a union group about a father reluctant to change a diaper. Those who remember the events of that era and notice the date will realize before he starts to leave the Hilton that it’s where Reagan and three other people would be shot by a mentally ill young man. What’s the point of starting with this incident? It’s not especially gripping, because we know he survived. And other than his quips (“I forgot to duck,” he says to his wife), it’s not especially revelatory of his temperament or his impact on history.
We then turn to Jon Voight as the elderly former KGB agent, Viktor, telling the story of his years of fascinated surveillance to an ambitious young politician. The spy may be inspired by a real-life former KGB agent named Viktor Petrovitch Ivanov, though there is no evidence that he said or did what is portrayed in the film. Viktor explains that his job was to “profile those who could become threats,” with psychological insight as important as spycraft.This takes us back to Reagan’s origins in the small town of Dixon, Illinois, with a devoted, church-going mother who tells him that everything, “even the most seemingly random twist of fate,” is all part of the divine plan. She teaches him to stand up to bullies. His father is charming and a great storyteller, but unreliable and an alcoholic. Reagan will incorporate and react to these influences throughout his life.
His time as a lifeguard will also be significant. The movie does not try to verify Reagan’s claim that he rescued 77 people, but we do see that he was such a hottie that some of those rescues might have been girls pretending to be in trouble to get his attention. But later we will learn (or we will be told, at least), that all those days staring into the water gave him not only a special understanding of currents, but the ability to impute that knowledge to be able to forecast international security developments. Really.
We then see Reagan as his movie star days are fading and his marriage to Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) is ending. He is relegated to doing commercials, but getting interested in heading the actors’ union and protecting Hollywood from Communist infiltration. That’s how he meets actress Nancy Davis (Penelope Ann Miller), who becomes his fiercely devoted wife. The next thing you know, he’s in politics, elected Governor, and running for President. And apparently inventing trickle-down economics though in reality it (1) was the idea of economist Arthur Laffer and (2) has been consistently proven to be, to use a non-economics term, bunk.
Quaid captures Reagan’s affability and cadences, and the scenes with Miller have a believable sense of their devotion and partnership. But the movie overplays his ability and achievements, under-plays the Iran-Contra scandal, and overlooks several other failures entirely. Reagan’s responses to Iran-Contra, like his deadly neglect of a child’s pet fish, is essentially “oops.”It comes so close to parody that it brings to mind the “Saturday Night Live” “Mastermind” skit, starring Phil Hartman as a secretly super-intelligent Reagan. There’s a lot to explore in examining Reagan’s presidency (currently 16th in the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey’s ranking). We could use much more insight into what made him “the great communicator,” but this movie is a poor communicator about the history and the man.
