Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ earns an ovation as it enters awards race

Richard Jewell, the security guard who alerted police about a suspicious backpack that eventually exploded, saving the lives of countless people at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, only to then be accused of planting the bomb himself, will soon receive a plaque in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park.

“I’d like a street named after him,” Clint Eastwood said after the AFI Fest world premiere of his film “Richard Jewell.” “He deserves even more.”

With “Richard Jewell,” Eastwood has given the late security guard something bigger than a plaque or a namesake street. Eastwood has crafted a monument to Jewell’s heroism and a portrait of its shattering aftermath, an arc Eastwood calls a “great American tragedy.”

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Director Clint Eastwood talks with Bobi Jewell, the mother of the subject of his newest film, “Richard Jewell” on the red carpet for its premiere during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Bobi’s son was accused and later found not guilty of bombing the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actor Jon Hamm walks the red carpet for the premiere of director Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.   (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actors Paul Walter Hauser, from left, and Kathy Bates walk the red carpet with Bobi Jewell and director Clint Eastwood at the premiere of “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actor Paul Walter Hauser, left, clutches hands with Bobi Jewell on the red carpet for the premiere of his new film, “Richard Jewell,” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. He plays the title character, her son, who was accused and later found not guilty of bombing the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Jewell died in 2007.   (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actors Sam Rockwell, from left, Paul Walter Hauser, Kathy Bates, director Clint Eastwood and Jon Hamm on the red carpet for the premiere “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Director Clint Eastwood walks the red carpet for the world premiere of his film “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.   (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actor Sam Rockwell is photographed with the person he portrayed, G. Watson Bryant Jr., attorney for Richard Jewell, on the red carpet of the world premiere of director Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actors Sam Rockwell, left, Paul Walter Hauser and Kathy Bates on the red carpet for the premiere of their new film, “Richard Jewell,” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Hauser plays the title character, who was accused and later found not guilty of the Centennial Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Rockwell plays his lawyer, G. Watson Bryant Jr., and Bates plays Bobi Jewell, mother of Richard.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actor Sam Rockwell is photographed with the person he portrayed, G. Watson Bryant Jr., attorney for Richard Jewell, on the red carpet of the world premiere of director Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Actor Sam Rockwell walks the red carpet for the premiere of his new film, “Richard Jewell,” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.  (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Actress Kathy Bates walks the red carpet for the premiere of “Richard Jewell” during AFI Fest 2019 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She plays Bobi Jewell, mother of Richard Jewell, who was accused of and later found not guilty of the bombing of Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.   (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

Eastwood began shooting “Richard Jewell” in late June and wrapped in August, enabling Warner Bros. to get it in theaters on Dec. 13. The film could do well commercially, though unlike “American Sniper” or “Sully” — other Eastwood films depicting the dark side of celebrated heroes — it doesn’t have a star. Comedic actor Paul Walter Hauser plays Jewell (Jonah Hill was originally attached), and he makes the most of his first starring role, playing the title character as a kind of principled Paul Blart sad sack, an ordinary man who did an extraordinary thing.

The late-arriving “Richard Jewell” faces a challenge to gain awards season traction, though the movie certainly won’t have a hard time generating publicity. Billy Ray’s screenplay, based on a 1997 Vanity Fair article and a new book on the case, hammers its theme of an unpretentious Southern man, a Baptist who loves guns, hunting and his mama (Kathy Bates), being unfairly targeted by “two of the most powerful forces in the world” — the United States government and an unscrupulous media.

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The editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has already lashed out at the movie, defending the paper’s reporting on the case. That reporting came under fire at the time, though, with the American Journalism Review criticizing the Journal-Constitution for triggering a full-scale media frenzy with scanty sourcing.

“I find it appalling, quite frankly, at how quickly everybody leapt to finger this guy,” the late David Shaw, the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning media reporter, said in a 1996 interview. “To write about it in the context of a larger story about the explosion, down in the sixth or eighth paragraph —that’s one thing. But to bring out a special edition and start leading your newscast and putting out Page 1 stories on it — that’s over the top.”

But “Richard Jewell” is also over the top in some respects, particularly the way in which Olivia Wilde plays the Atlanta paper’s police reporter Kathy Scruggs. She’s written as an unethical journalist who sleeps with an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) for information (or maybe because he looks like Jon Hamm ... or maybe all of the above). She’s also callous, flippant, a boozer and only bothers to check the facts of her reporting weeks after the story runs.

Additionally, she seems to have the power of invisibility and the improbable ability to develop a conscience shortly after praying to God that the bomber be “[expletive] interesting.”

Wilde did not attend the Q&A Wednesday night.

Joining Eastwood at the invite-only screening, which was concurrent with a public unveiling at the Chinese Theater, were Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Bates and Hamm. Bates earned a standing ovation from the audience, made up mostly of Screen Actors Guild members. They rose for Eastwood too, though as the 89-year-old filmmaker noted: “I’m an old-timer. A senior citizen. They have to treat me well.”

Rockwell, funny and fierce as Jewell’s attorney, might be the movie’s best chance at awards season success, given his recent roll with “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “Vice.” Asked how he cast Rockwell, Eastwood replied that he thought he was great portraying George W. Bush in “Vice,” though he admitted he “didn’t see the whole movie.”

Eastwood tried to make “Richard Jewell” for four years before it came together this spring. “I wanted this picture in the worst way,” he said, wrapping up the evening. “I sold a lot of souls to the devil.”

We’ll know in a few weeks how that bargain turns out.