The Comey Rule

The drama is framed by a narrator, deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, for no particular reason. It feels like a show you’ve seen a hundred times before – lots of talking in brown rooms with unpleasant lighting, acronyms and beige raincoats and meetings on park benches.

Because this series works from Comey’s own tell-some book, A Higher Loyalty, the rationale for his actions lands with the soft touch of an absolution-seeking defense. As Ray would have it, Comey’s problem is that he’s virtuous to a fault. ... [Brendan Gleeson’s take on Trump is] a fine impression and middling performance, better in its particulars than in its essence.

Despite all of the authentic, real-life political fireworks they had to work with in this production, which is based on Comey’s bestseller “A Higher Loyalty,” “The Comey Rule” still comes off flat — and even boring — in places. It’s as if the cast and narrative could not compete with the larger-than-life absurdity of the actual people and events they’re depicting. ... These caricatures might distract from the story, but “The Comey Rule,” written and directed by Billy Ray, is still worth watching.

Uneven but entertaining. ... Daniels plays this righteousness and decorum to the hilt. ... Gleeson's accent and intonations waver, yet he captures an interiority the real Trump rarely exposes. It's a mediocre impression and possibly a great performance. Other standouts include a tragically hopeful Hunter and McNairy, whose weaselly, insecure Rosenstein, at times more Salieri than Brutus, represents an ideal compromise of tones that The Comey Rule hits only occasionally.

Ultimately, and rather uninterestingly, “The Comey Rule” becomes hagiographic and enamored with Comey’s self-made myth of duty and loyalty above all and the self-serving notion that if mistakes were made, they were made in the name of higher truths.

“The Comey Rule” doesn’t try too hard to get the audience invested in anyone but Comey. So it’s not until Trump arrives and starts throwing the FBI out of whack that scenes carry an extra edge to them. ... Ray also isn’t shy about amping up the sinister nature of Trump through formal touches. ... All of this helps frame “The Comey Rule” as a monster movie more than a melodrama, which mostly works in its favor.

I’m on the fence with The Comey Rule — it’s not revelatory, and mostly tells us what we already know. When it’s entertaining, it seems almost unintentional. But ultimately, it’s a curiosity watch that’ll compel you to stick with it through its entirety.

“The Comey Rule” does a fine job of stating the case, on the record. What it doesn’t do is go beyond the surface in its portrayal of Comey or its re-creations of events we already know all too well.

Comey's story in black and white, with not much shading in between.

“The Comey Rule” is not good drama; it’s clunky, self-serious and melodramatic. But it makes an unsparing point amid our own election season.

“The Comey Rule”is an occasionally artful and eventually absorbing dramatic reenactment of former FBI director James B. Comey’s unfortunate and, by his account, unavoidable role in two permanently upsetting events before and after the 2016 election of President Trump.

A bigger problem with The Comey Rule is that it tells a complex historical event from the point of view of one person. ... Ray tries his best to pull in other voices, but the word Comey is in the title and the reality is that this story is much bigger than him.