George Clooney is universally known both as a ladies’ man and a guy’s guy.
Endowed with looks a la Cary Grant, a gruff, sexy voice ladies swoon over and an impeccable fashion sense that makes him irresistible even in a miner’s garb, Clooney is one of the most recognizable actors around.
However, a closer look at his repertoire reveals few great films and a multiplicity of good ones. Clooney’s body of work could be considered a catalog of near-misses.
For his third directorial effort, Clooney is out with a football comedy, “Leatherheads.” He also stars in the film, which features John Krasinski (“The Office”) and Renee Zellweger (“Bridget Jones’s Diary.”)
“Leatherheads” is about Princeton star running back Carter Rutherford. Rutherford took a break from college to fight in World War I. While overseas, he singlehandedly made a platoon of German soldiers surrender to American soldiers.
Meanwhile, the professional football league is going through a depression. Teams are folding up; crowds and profits are down. To reinvigorate the remaining franchises, a savvy football player, Dodge Connolly, hits upon the idea of having Rutherford lend his prestigious name to the dwindling league by joining a team.
With “Leatherheads,” it is easy to see Clooney is influenced by Preston Sturges’ screwball comedies. Indeed, Clooney and Zellweger have a sense of timing reminiscent of Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in “The Lady Eve.”
Sturges was a director and screenwriter working in the ’40s and ’50s who specialized in films where the suave guy engages in a verbal tug-of-war with the smart girl.
In 1944, Sturges made “Hail the Conquering Hero,” a film about a man, Woodrow Truesmith, who was unable to fight in World War II because he had a medical condition preventing him from joining active duty.
Instead of returning to his hometown, Truesmith worked in a San Diego shipyard. By chance, he met a group of Marines who decided to help him face his mom by fabricating a story of meritorious service during the war. With his new found status, Truesmith goes home and is immediately drafted for political office.
Seen in this light, “Leatherheads” becomes more of a protest against the current war than a celebration of football. – which was the main reason audiences yawned through this film. They were seduced by trailers promoting the film as a romantic comedy; to their chagrin, they discovered they had been suckered into a lecture about Iraq.
What gumption!
Clooney dare not criticize the troops, so he undermines our conception that the soldiers fighting abroad are heroes. From what I gleaned from the film, Clooney believes heroism is a state construct, created to buck up public support for a nation at war.
This is hinted at when Rutherford returns to the United States. He is drafted to sell U.S. bonds, to speak on behalf of veterans – all activities needed to hawk a war.
And lest these scenes remain in the fictional realm, we can see actual examples in the tragic ordeals of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
At the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, Lynch was a supply clerk in Iraq. While on a detour, her convoy was ambushed and captured as it made its way in the Nasiriyah. Claims by military spokesmen that Lynch was tortured were used to generate pathos for the war effort.
Pat Tillman, on the other hand, was a safety with the Arizona Cardinals who turned down a lucrative deal and enlisted in the Army in 2002. Tillman was killed in combat in Afghanistan and immediately heralded as a patriot in the mold of Nathan Hale.
Unfortunately, both accounts turned out to be false.
Here, Clooney defiantly strikes out at the admonition given at the end of “The Man who Shot Liberty Valance,” which was “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
To poke a hole in Rutherford’s valorous facade, Clooney had a newspaper reporter print the real events concerning the surrender.
This naive belief in the purity of the press is the main failing of the film.
Clooney assumes, as can be seen from his past two films, that the press is goodness personified. But actually, although it has anointed itself the guardian of the public interest, the press also has to break even.
“Leatherheads” ultimately engages in a lost battle. Americans worship heroes because we are a warrior society not because the military-industrial complex sells us chimeras.
We are stirred by own bloodlust, as much as Virgil when he penned the first line of the Aeneid. Why else do we praise men like Colin Powell and John Rambo, embodiments of our virility, personifications of our collective manliness?
Unfortunately, while “Leatherheads” has the smarts, it remains an uneven salad of lackluster football, platonic romance and obscure political dissension. Makes me wonder if Clooney is better behind the camera than he is in front of it.
—-Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]