While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Clint Eastwood is a talented filmmaker. His overall body of work stands up and speaks for itself. But he misses the mark, tragically, in this. He seems to be very interested in Hoover's homosexuality, and there are intensely dramatic scenes involving the protagonist and his lover, Clyde Tolson. But the implicit involvement in conspiracies and cover-ups in the assassination of JFK, RFK and MLK (to say nothing of Malcolm X) are not dealt with at all. Hoover practically had the Warren Commission as his captive audience in the presentation of evidence, resulting in one of the greatest travesties of justice in American history. The film does briefly deal with the blackmailing of MLK, but it is not developed.Apart from this glaring inadequacy, the film under-utilizes the great Naomi Watts, cast as Hoover's lifelong personal secretary. Her scenes are very limited and pedestrian after an initial, awkward attempt by Hoover to court her. It's a strange film with lots of dramatic moments. But don't expect any illumination of Hoover's innumerable instances of suspect criminal behavior. It feels very strongly incomplete, and thus like a missed opportunity.

J. Edgar Hoover would absolutely revile Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar. Hell, he'd probably rustle up enough dirt on Eastwood to muscle him out of the industry, let alone quash his film. And that's why it's so unexpectedly genius and on-point. It would be almost a disservice to the enormity of Hoover - controversial, hugely problematic, but fundamentally influential - for his biopic to be anything but, and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black deftly, cleverly takes this dissonance to heart. So be warned: J. Edgar takes patience, and is, at times, almost unwatchably frustrating. But if Hoover's FBI imparts any moral, it's to always dig deeper - that's where the really rewarding pay dirt lies. If Eastwood and Black's aim was to immediately rid the viewer of traditional notions of comfort, they are resoundingly successful. The film's first act, with Leonardo DiCaprio buried under pounds of nauseatingly distracting prosthetics (picture Red from That 70s Show crossbred with a turtle) steering his own retroactive biography like a cringeworthy, self-congratulatory Citizen Kane, is so off-putting and tastelessly cliché that I nearly walked out. Actors mumble indulgently expositionary dialogue to coax out faux-gravitas in the FBI's confusing, under-explained inception, pretentiously underscored by harpsichord interludes(?!). It's also nearly impossible to see anything that's going on, as Eastwood, as if drunkenly skimming a film noir textbook, belligerently refuses to turn on a light. There are occasional bright bits (proverbially - they're still 90% in shadow): Eastwood's period-piece mise-en-scène is spotless, and Hoover taking his secretary on a date to show off his Library of Congress cataloguing system is exquisitely awkward. But it's not enough, amidst such a bundle of the laziest, most grimly unrewarding contemporary celebrity biopic tropes, and it's a real slog, to say the least. And then the cracks begin to show - cracks, interestingly, in the film's highly produced facade of monotonous convention, exposing these excruciating interview interludes as commentary on such problematically, inherently manicured personal access (ooh!). As Hoover tackles increasingly more ambitious crimes, we get steadily less of the excruciatingly overproduced interview flashbacks, and more personal access into many of Hoover's accomplishments being… flubbed or exaggerated, as Eastwood sashays into a comfortably gripping pace, flashbacks and all. We get a breezy montage of DiCaprio, summoning his best Catch Me If You Can charm, leading a series of high profile arrests, and posing with Shirley Temple at the red carpet premiere of G-Men. We get impressive cutaways of DiCaprio barking out the need to be constantly vigilant for commies and criminals, only to have his movie theatre PSA being unceremoniously interrupted by an ad for James Cagney's The Public Enemy. And, uneasily, we wonder: is Eastwood poking at the pompous solemnity of Hoover's true crime legacy somewhat? Are we - dare I say it - having fun? It's still too dark to see much, but, at this point, I'll take it!And then, the final reveal: J. Edgar masquerades as a political crime drama, but boil away the surface trappings and we're left with a harrowingly moving unrequited love story. Yes - even the staunchly conservative Eastwood is unafraid to meet those rumours head on, and, upon the introduction of Armie Hammer's Clyde Tolson, and Hoover's eyes slyly, guiltily lingering on him, things take another turn for the even more interesting. Suddenly, Hoover's underbelly is laid bare - a sequence of him nervily practicing diction into the mirror, surveyed by Judi Dench's ferociously tyrannical mother, is far more Aviator than Catch Me If You Can - while his attempted 'coming out' to her, and the ripple effects in his subsequent weekend getaway with Tolson, are genuinely, viscerally heartbreaking. And, for those riding out the film with morbid curiosity as to whether Eastwood will go all the way and dress Hoover in drag (don't deny it; we're all with you), by the time he finally does, it's such a tender, intimate, and emotionally weighty moment that you'll be too busy fighting back tears to explore any inherent camp potential. Hey, it's not like the tenebrous lighting will let you see anything anyway… Awards-baiting aside (not this time!), DiCaprio's performance here is too expansively impressive not to be recognized. Apart from spanning the emotional spectrum of robotically stilted to slickly charismatic to explosively vulnerable, DiCaprio works because he understands what makes Hoover tick - his uncompromising repression, need for control and order, both macro and micro, at all costs, and fear of the power of secrets - and integrates this into every precisely orchestrated scowl, gesture, and cuff-links-straighten. That said, it's, surprisingly, the infinitely charismatic Armie Hammer who walks away with the show, even miraculously out-acting his ludicrously liver-spotted old-age makeup. Each moment Hammer's Tolson is on screen - usually silently in the background - surges with quiet but riveting, palpable emotion, and the preciously few moments he's allowed to uncork are truly stunning and enormously moving. The naturalistic, tender chemistry he shares with DiCaprio is a thing of rare beauty - elating and wholly devastating at once - while his being one of the exceedingly rare examples of a younger actor convincing at 'playing old' is worthy of all accolades in itself. Naomi Watts also delivers consistently emotionally hardy work in the largely thankless role as Hoover's secretary confidante, while Judi Dench was born to play a terrifyingly domineering mother, and infuses each syllable of ruthless intolerance with perfect acrid fervour. Eastwood and Black arguably don't dwell on the amorality of Hoover's political machinations as much as they could (perhaps thinking his reputation served as shorthand enough), but delivering such a powerfully, emotionally charged invasion of his private life feels like its own exquisite justice. Morality aside, Eastwood finds a certain profundity in the identically framed sequences of Hoover ushering in each successive president ("Alrighty"). As times changed, Hoover WAS the consistency of America, or at least its warped dream - and J. Edgar commits the unforgivable offence of understanding him.-7.5/10

I picked this up in a remainder bin. That should have told me a lot.Let me count the ways this overly long biopic fails:(1) The lighting while intended to be atmospheric capturing the 1930s/40s, starts to get very irksome a wee way in. I want to see the characters not squint through the entire film.(2) The writing fell far short of exploring the complex character of J. Edgar, traits are lightly touched on and then irritatingly withdrawn or totally incomplete - i.e. his rampant racism and hatred of MLK is offered without explanation.(3) The aspect of Hoover's homosexuality is barely touched upon and his cross-dressing shown as a one-off event after his mother's death.(4) The makeup was completely over the top, especially but not limited to Armie Hammer playing his lover Colson. More suited to a comedy skit.(5) The sequence of events is all over the place, very distracting and also Hoover's lies about events are depicted as if reality and much much later revealed to be fantasy.(6) Overall a shambles of a film. But lawd, how they tried.4 out of 10.

Before watching J. Edgar I, as usually, checked out the IMDb score. I try not to be influenced by it that much, but have to admit that the thought of the low score the movie had received, didn't leave my mind the entire time. And I kept asking myself - is it because of actors, plot, writing or something else? It wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't a successful one as well. Because I'm not an American, the history of FBI and Hoover was quite unknown for me. And I usually like movies that can teach me something new or at least make me do some research, especially if it's related with historical events and people. But there's a negative side to it as well. Sometimes movies fail to explain simple things in an understandable way and it keeps you in the dark through the whole movie. I had a notion that this is going to be the case, so I opened Wikipedia already from the start and followed the movie time-line and some of the characters. Is it really the task of the audience to read additional materials or it is writer/director that has to provide this information? I don't want to write a full review here, but in short - DiCaprio was excellent as always, but couldn't save the whole movie. Other characters lacked emotion and their personalities weren't deep enough. I lost the confidence and belief because of poor makeup and dark lightning. Not going to watch it again, sorry.