J. Edgar
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: November 9, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
14
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 8, 2011
J. Edgar is a somber, enigmatic, darkly fascinating tale, and how could it be otherwise? Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertNov 9, 2011
As a period biopic, J. Edgar is masterful. Few films span seven decades this comfortably. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickNov 9, 2011
DiCaprio may well receive a Best Actor Oscar for his tour de force as the conflicted FBI director -- greatly abetted by Hammer (who played the Winklevoss twins in "The Social Network'') in his first major role as the flamboyant but frustrated Tolson. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesNov 10, 2011
The one mystery Black and Eastwood can't solve is Hoover's love life - perhaps because the solution is too simple to be believed. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. HobermanNov 8, 2011
Although hardly flawless, Eastwood's biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since the "Letters From Iwo Jima" – "Flags of Our Fathers" duo, if not "Unforgiven." Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 8, 2011
Mr. Eastwood doesn't just shift between Hoover's past and present, his intimate life and popular persona, he also puts them into dialectic play, showing repeatedly how each informed the other. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyNov 4, 2011
This surprising collaboration between director Clint Eastwood and "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenNov 9, 2011
Filmed primarily in desaturated colors and oblique shadows, the look of J. Edgar is spot-on. The time frame jumps around, spanning decades in a single leap, but it doesn't strain the structure. Eastwood and DiCaprio have delivered a nuanced story about a man, a mythos, and an institution that relies on the facts rather than the legend. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 9, 2011
Even when the film trips on its tall ambitions, you can't shake it off. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanNov 9, 2011
DiCaprio does more than disappear behind steely glasses and prosthetic old-age makeup. He transforms himself, in a feat of acting, from the inside out. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJaime N. ChristleyNov 9, 2011
Black's script, in the wrong hands, could have come under fire for confusing Hoover's twisted mind with his homosexuality or his problems with Mother. Eastwood doesn't seem to give a fuck, and only opts for one overt visual match, depicting as mirror images Hoover's lifeless corpse and the remains of the Lindbergh baby. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 9, 2011
I like the way DiCaprio and Hammer capture the little things - the byplay, the moments in which two men are "playing" FBI agents, partly for show, partly for real. At times, DiCaprio's macho posturing recalls a junior G-man version of Marlon Brando's self-hating homosexual in "Reflections of a Golden Eye." Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 9, 2011
DiCaprio wears the persona of Hoover with ease, again reminding audiences that the young man who made so many girls swoon with Titanic has grown into an actor of great range and capability. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigNov 8, 2011
J. Edgar shines a probing beam of light on a man who was widely feared, often disliked, but rarely understood. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 9, 2011
It is flawed but ultimately captivating. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid DenbyNov 7, 2011
No stranger man - not even Nixon - has ever been at the center of an American epic. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 10, 2011
The foundation of this sympathy is Hoover's complicated sexuality. Eastwood and Black have attempted to provide Hoover with the balm he denied himself in his own lifetime. It doesn't work. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevyNov 10, 2011
Eastwood never manages to bring the past to life, even as DiCaprio and company dive gamely into the material. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottNov 11, 2011
So while J. Edgar ends up feeling like a mostly complete portrait of the man, and as fascinating a story as it is, it still falls just short of being something entirely memorable. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenNov 11, 2011
What a sprawling, befuddling, fascinating, frustrating mess of a movie. Usually the tautest of directors, Clint Eastwood has gone all slack here, allowing his subject to get completely away from him. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 10, 2011
That J. Edgar never ultimately convinces - that at times it's quite entertainingly bad - can be blamed on both an unfocused script and the project's very bigness. Somewhere in this ambitious, meticulously produced epic is a small love story struggling to get out. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 10, 2011
Most disappointing, Eastwood's decades-spanning portrait reveals little about the man himself. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanNov 9, 2011
So what's the motivation for the earnest, handsome, well-acted, unenlightening, workaday J. Edgar in 2011? Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezNov 9, 2011
This is Eastwood's "Brokeback Mountain," chased by a healthy serving of "J.F.K."- style paranoia and conspiracies (Oliver Stone is going to love this movie.) But because so much of what the film says about Hoover remains speculative and unproven, J. Edgar can't fully cross all its Ts. Read full review
60
EmpireNick de SemlyenJan 16, 2012
A well acted but unfocused study of one of the 20th century's most colourful characters. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNov 8, 2011
At least Leonardo DiCaprio, grounded and sure, has commitment to spare. His portrayal of Hoover is undeniably terrific. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeNov 4, 2011
Any movie in which the longtime FBI honcho features as the central character must supply some insight into what made him tick, or suffer from the reality that the Bureau's exploits were far more interesting than the bureaucrat who ran it -- a dilemma J. Edgar never rises above. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubTasha RobinsonNov 9, 2011
Eastwood's prim, respectful biography presents Hoover in turn as a muddy political metaphor, a lesson in self-mythologizing, and a case history in repression, but never particularly as a man. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallNov 9, 2011
There might be a great movie about any of Hoover's triumphs and secrets, but not all at once. Read full review
55
MovielineStephanie ZacharekNov 9, 2011
As Lily Tomlin's Ernestine once said, "There's nothing like a Hoover when you're dealing with dirt." Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar could use more dirt: This is a sensitive, sympathetic portrait of a scummy little man. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsNov 10, 2011
J. Edgar is the kind of prestige production that apologists will call polished, but even the technical attributes are tinny. In the gay-geezers scenes, Hammer wears terrible old-age makeup, and the entire film is bathed in sepia tones as weak as its convictions. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensNov 9, 2011
Whether unintentionally or by design, the movie never really makes a case either for or against the troubled figure at its center. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 9, 2011
It's watchable and reasonably entertaining, to be sure. Eastwood doesn't make movies that are hard to sit through. But something in the film's point of view is off, not at cross-purposes, not contradictory, but incomplete, irrelevant and ever-so-faintly ridiculous. Read full review
50
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreNov 9, 2011
Truth be told, J. Edgar drags, even when it pays homage to the widely discredited urban legend that the guy liked to dress in drag. Read full review
50
TimeRichard CorlissNov 9, 2011
The film manages to be both sensational and stodgy, like a guided tour that goes on until it drones. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedNov 8, 2011
I expected more from a movie about the most feared man in America for half a century. Whatever else you think about him, in retrospect, he had balls of brass - an essential quality replaced in J. Edgar by dull indifference. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfNov 8, 2011
J. Edgar is infuriatingly coy and noncritical about its subject, an undeniable patriot but also an alarmist and a ruiner of lives. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 7, 2011
It's too bad J. Edgar is so shapeless and turgid and ham-handed, so rich in bad lines and worse readings. Not DiCaprio, though. Read full review
38
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 9, 2011
All of it makes for a rollicking, outsize tale of overweening ambition and palace intrigue, but J. Edgar instead plays it safe in a turgid, back-and-forth series of tableaux that look as if they were filmed from behind a scrim soaked in weak tea. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 10, 2011
J. Edgar, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, is at war with itself, and everyone loses...Mr. Eastwood's ponderous direction, a clumsy script by Dustin Lance Black and ghastly slatherings of old-age makeup all conspire to put the story at an emotional and historical distance. It's a partially animated waxworks. Read full review
20
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 9, 2011
J. Edgar turns out to be one of the worst ideas anybody's ever had, a mendacious, muddled, sub-mediocre mess that turns some of the most explosive episodes of the 20th century into bad domestic melodrama and refuses to take any clear position on one of American history's most controversial figures. Read full review
20
Boxoffice MagazineJames RocchiNov 6, 2011
Between Eastwood's direction and Dustin Lance Black's screenplay, what you feel leaking off the screen in every scene is missed opportunity. Read full review
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