Reagan's ugly hagiography is middle-of-the-night History Channel nonsense

One of the most subtle moments in Reagan, the biopic starring Dennis Quaid as the 40th President of the United States, comes at the first inauguration sequence, with a close-up of Ronald Reagan’s hand on an open Bible, revealing a margin note in 2 Chronicles: “A wonderful verse for the healing of a nation.” 

Real Reagan-heads will know that this is the King James that Ronald’s mother, Nelle, annotated and passed down to her son, which he was sworn in on at both of his inaugurations in 1981 and 1985. Reagan kept it open to that verse, which reads: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven . . . and will heal their land.” This passage, in reference to King Solomon—whom Christ himself extolled as a wise king—adds to the sibylline nature of Ronald Reagan’s presidency that Reagan seeks to convey. The verse in his mother’s Bible, along with a preacher’s prophecy earlier in the film about Reagan’s path to the White House (which, in the moment, spooks the future president), and the deeds we will see him commit to end the Cold War argue that Reagan the man, the human, the mortal was also Reagan the Heavenly God brought to Earth. It is sure to resonate with the target audience of a film penned by the writer of a God’s Not Dead sequel and produced by journeymen EPs of the Pure Flix and Hard Faith christofascist content creation world (and yes, Kevin Sorbo makes an appearance). 

The greatest sin of Reagan, though, is not its warped worldview, which is to be expected, but that for a movie about a man who puts himself at the center of a world apparently on the brink of annihilation, Reagan lacks any drama at all. 

The whole film is framed as the memories of an ex-KGB agent played by Jon Voight, Viktor Petrovich (who I have to imagine is a completely fictional character because 1) Petrovich is not a surname but a patronym, and 2) TMDB and Letterboxd miscredit the character as “Viktor Novikov,” a villain in the 2016 Hitman video game). Petrovich recounts to a young up-and-comer in Russian politics his observations on Reagan, since the would-be president was but a young Hollywood aspirant. 

This creates an atemporal structure, constantly passing between past and present, and multiple subjectivities, seemingly from Petrovich’s and Reagan’s perspectives individually and simultaneously, not dissimilar to last year’s Oppenheimer. Indeed, the Voight scenes seem to serve a similar initial purpose to the expositing done by Robert Downey Jr. in that blockbuster. Perhaps Reagan is offering itself as a conservative counter. (Although Oppenheimer features many communists surrounding its protagonist, it would be hard to describe that film as anything but politically ambivalent, even though some have read it as anti-cancel culture.) In an early sequence laying out the KGB’s plot to tear America apart from the inside is a series of photos of their-would be agents; the camera pans down to a picture of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his nuclear “gadget,” and then cuts to a Soviet officer holding a picture of the Hollywood sign. The Soviets have infiltrated the academic elite and mainstream media, and they’re using it to destroy America! At least, that is how these details should be read, because that is how they are given to us. 

Faces, figures, and important dates and times parade across the 135-minute runtime of Reagan, presented with importance in image yet weightlessness in effect—I could sit here and explain the narrative purpose of Reagan making a fool of soon-to-be-blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Sean Hankinson) or his battle with union agitator Herb Sorrell (Mark Kubr), whom the film accuses of being a Soviet agent trying to build one-big-union in Hollywood à la the IWW (this particular thread even implies that Sorrell and the AFL-CIO had something to do with John Hinkley’s assassination attempt on Reagan, although the film, of course, never seems to mention that Hinkley was indeed just a lone kook). 

They’re all pieces to a middle-of-the-night-History-Channel conspiracy, but it doesn’t build much of a movie, especially one trying to justify two hours where, presumably, there would be room for some dramatic movement rather than just hammering in point after point like it’s a high school essay. It moves forward, but without questions; the most “tense” sequence is a will-he-won’t-he moment where people anticipate if Reagan will really tell Mr. Gorbachev “Tear down this wall!” But of course he will. Even those not studied in Reaganography would know that, and they would know that it serves little consequence regardless. Even Reagan acknowledges this—it cuts to “Two Years Later” when the Berlin Wall comes down, but doesn’t mention that the collapse was due to a miscommunication with border guards rather than Reagan’s words. 

Reagan would have us believe these words matter, that what he says on TV can change the world. Maybe as president his acting can have the effect that his Hollywood career never had. He seems on the edge of losing re-election, but one good quip on the debate stage brings him back for a clean sweep. In Reagan, the Soviet politburo cowers as they watch the President of the United States give a broadcast speech, and Gorbachev (Olek Krupa) is eating out of the palm of Reagan’s hand after being alone in a room with him (this particular scene actually reminded me of the Yalta Conference sequence in the Soviet film The Fall Of Berlin, wherein Winston Churchill and FDR make a toast to Stalin’s greatness). Reagan is a movie where facts and logic win, where oration is power, where a good diss can win an argument. The movie lionizes the type of “debate” that popular conservative pundits have been obsessed with in recent years—not just through dialogue, but through the film’s structure, which acts as this type of rhetoric: here are my particular facts, and they support my particular argument, which backs up the way I already feel. Naturally, this is a presentation of some facts over others.

In Reagan, Ronald’s marriage to Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) is merely a means of emasculation where he watches her stardom take off while he’s left with supporting roles and domestic duties. She leaves the film forever once he meets Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller) and finds new importance in the power bestowed to him as SAG president. Reagan is shown to be ambivalent about the House of Un-American Activities Committee, seeing communism as a malignant force but also believing that it should be bested by democracy rather than the authority of the state. 

In real life, Reagan’s testifying as a “friendly witness” before HUAC was a strain on his and Wyman’s marriage to the point of divorce. And of course Wyman’s story with Reagan doesn’t end there. Wyman was close with her Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows co-star, Rock Hudson, who was publicly pulled out of the closet when he died of AIDS in 1985. Hudson’s death punched the AIDS epidemic, during which Reagan was personally culpable for hundreds of thousands of deaths by purposely ignoring the crisis, even further into the national spotlight. (Not to mention, Nancy Reagan personally blocked Hudson from getting experimental AIDS treatment.) In a film chock-full of information, one that purports or perhaps—generously—aspires to deliberating fairly on history, the information that Reagan intentionally omits becomes that much more egregious. That is because Reagan’s deliberation is actually obfuscation, meant to create a fake discourse on the president focusing only on what can easily be defended, rather than address any of the real, hard criticisms that were laid against him. 

It seems obvious to target this kind of film based on ideological content or goals, especially considering the audience it is trying to reach is one already aligned with the film. By the end of it, the characters are assuring Reagan that he did the best he could, and telling the audience “Hey, Iran-Contra was messed up, but maybe Reagan didn’t really know about it, and also the Contras were freedom fighters like George Washington!” It’s enough contradictory bullshit that you could cover all of Rancho del Cielo. 

This is all more about what Reagan does rather than what Reagan is, meaning what is actually on the screen. And that is because what is on the screen is quite ugly—it is abject. Dennis Quaid crafts his performance through uncanny makeup, what looks like digital de-aging, a terrifying vocal impression, and a pained immobile smile. Reagan tells us it is the story of a gentle redeemer of a country, and presents us with a gruesome caricature that even Reagan’s worst enemies would willingly render. 

I could fill pages full recounting the movie’s ugliness, with Christian Sebaldt’s waxy digital cinematography rendering cheap soundstages—built in the halls of a Masonic Lodge in Oklahoma (you read that right)—as impressions of the backrooms where the fate of the Cold War was decided. Hell, I haven’t even mentioned that Scott Stapp plays Frank Sinatra (and does almost disappear into his cameo, with just a touch of a Creed-y twang sneaking through), or that Bob Dylan recorded a cover of Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” which plays over the credits as a picture montage of the real man takes us home (possibly the best moment of the film, and one that will likely only be appreciated by fans of Dylan’s recent project covering pieces from the Great American Songbook). 

Perhaps that is the saving grace for a film otherwise buried so deeply in its psychosis that it can’t see that the man they are selling as the Christ figure of American politics moves and talks like a Madame Tussauds figure come to life. Beneath Reagan’s incoherence, under all that weirdness, inside the nonsensical, cherry-picked, worldview that is so fun to poke apart, is ultimately something I was running from by trying to keep my mind moving for the duration of the film’s runtime: Anything was better than simply sitting with how ugly and boring the movie really is. 

Director: Sean McNamara
Writers: Howard Klausner
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller, Robert Davi, Lesley-Anne Down, Jon Voight
Release Date: August 30, 2024