I did not think Dennis Quaid would be the right person to play Ronald Reagan. This is the same actor who played Gordon Cooper 40 years ago in The Right Stuff, one of my favorite movies. In that film, Quaid displayed his wide boyish grin, which is on display here as well, and gives away that under all that makeup we are watching Quaid and not Reagan. However, Quaid gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Reagan, capturing perfectly not only the voice but also the essence of who Reagan was.
The problem with any two-hour biography is that it is going to be rushed. Ronald Reagan's entire life was much more complicated than what can be shown in two hours. A single event in his life might take two hours to tell perfectly. The movie is more of a collection of brief highlights of Reagan's life. There are so many details left out that I feel shortchanged. For example, we see David Stockman for only about 5 seconds, and the film barely covers the Iran-Contra scandal. However, the movie succeeds brilliantly at capturing the emotional feel of Reagan.
Had this been a three-hour movie like Oppenheimer, it could have captured more detail about Reagan's life, but Oppenheimer didn't do this very well and was more of a soap opera. However, a longer run time wouldn't have made the film any more entertaining. You can tell that the movie had a limited budget and they did the best they could with the budget they had.
I'm impressed by the performances of a great many supporting actors.
The negative reviews have much to do with how people feel about Ronald Reagan. If you lived through the 1970s and 1980s then you are going to have a different perspective than people who didn't. The 1970s was likely the worst decade for the nation in my lifetime. There was the Watergate scandal, the oil crisis, and then during the Jimmy Carter presidency, we had monstrous inflation, high interest rates, unemployment, a deep recession, and the Iranian hostage crisis. Ronald Reagan came along and said that we as a nation are better than this, and we have only forgotten what a great nation we are. Things did improve significantly under his presidency.
The rushed presentation reminds me of "The Iron Lady", but the difference is that "The Iron Lady" is highly critical of Margaret Thatcher, and this film adores Ronald Reagan. For older Americans who also adore Reagan, it is preaching to the choir.
The story is told from the perspective of a fictional KGB political analyst whose job was to monitor Reagan as a potential threat to the Soviet Union. I have no doubt that such people existed, but here it comes off as a gimmick, but it also works by putting Reagan into the context of the Cold War. Reagan was such a strong anti-communist that the movie made that the main focus of his life.
Since the movie was released during an election year some people might view it as political propaganda. However, the plan was to release three years ago but the film was delayed by COVID and the writer's strike.
I was so impressed that I wanted to applaud at the end. I didn't at first because I thought that it might look silly to applaud a motion picture, but when the rest of the audience applauded, I joined in.
Rating: A-. Although far from a complete biography, the movie does an excellent job of capturing who Ronald Reagan was.
