Reagan movie biopic critics miss the point of Cold War history
He arguably won the chronic, nearly catastrophic Cold War and helped bring down the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain – and in so doing, did his best to free more people than Abraham Lincoln ever could have.
That it took this long for President Ronald Reagan to earn an admiring biopic says more about American filmmaking than about his lasting legacy of American strength and moral clarity.
Indeed, while anything below 60% is considered a “rotten tomato,” the critics at RottenTomatoes.com give the new film Reagan a lowly 20% rating – right up there with those classics The Hangover III, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Audiences feel very different, of course – giving Reagan a near-perfect 98%.
It certainly appears the Reagan movie biopic critics have missed the point: This was an America-first, freedom-loving president who nearly singlehandedly won the Cold War.
“If the film is adulatory … it is also true and deserved,” writes National Review’s Rich Lowry. “Reagan was one of the country’s great statesmen who prevailed in a titanic struggle between totalitarianism and freedom.”
So, the audience’s instincts are right, even if their math may be a little generous. I can’t say I blame them for their exuberance: Patriotism and Americana don’t play well today if they play at all, and audiences are starving for but a morsel of it.
Reagan is, therefore, a feast for their eyes and ears, for no modern figure represents patriotism and Americana quite like Ronald Reagan. Whatever his faults, no one can question his love for this country or for freedom in general. In fact, his only real scandal, Iran-Contra, was born of his zeal to free people – not of the personal or political ambition that sullies so many other politicians.
Meanwhile, the Reagan movie biopic critics don’t seem to want to hear it at all.
Even the theaters seem to have miscalculated the movie’s popularity. I’m pretty sure that the day after the Labor Day holiday, my local theater suddenly added multiple showings after initially planning just one.
Another thing critics recoil at is uplifting films, and this is one of the best of late.
It’s also a film that should be shown to schoolchildren across the country – for its invaluable inside look at world-changing history and for its patriotic vibe, which is so scarce today.
Dennis Quaid, who credits his return to Christianity for saving him from cocaine addiction, not only vaguely resembles Reagan but at times sounds confusingly like him.
Reagan’s determined and principled head-to-head battle for world supremacy with the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev – along with Pope John Paul II’s spiritual stance against Soviet domination of his native Poland – helped collapse the USSR.
Reagan’s powerful convictions, his unyielding belief in human freedom, and his commanding oratory in West Berlin also helped convince Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
“Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone,” Reagan said in 1992, “I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.”
There’s nothing wrong with that – or with celebrating it in 2024.
