Out of all 46 presidents, Ronald Reagan was not one I would expect to direct a movie over. Still, Reagan (2024) shows that truly anything can happen. This movie felt as if it should have come out in the 2000s. The atmosphere, acting, and style of storytelling make it feel like a movie that I would have watched with my dad around the 4th of July.
Reagan is told through the perspective of a Soviet during the time of Reagan’s presidency. He narrates the life of Reagan growing up, his acting and political career, and how he came to be a president. The main purpose of the movie is the conflict between Reagan and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
It remains unclear why the storytelling was through another person and not Reagan himself, since the narrator does not contribute anything to the story besides being on the opposite side.
To put the genre of this movie as an action feels insulting to real action movies. This movie is dreadfully boring; it is absurd for it to be two hours and 20 minutes long. Half of the movie could have been finished in 30 minutes. The storytelling is just excessive. A person’s life is very long and there is a lot to tell in a biopic, but again, it did not need to be over two hours.
The director of the movie, Sean McNamara, created a few hits like Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997) and The Suit Life Movie (2011), but since the 2000s his films kind of went down from there.
There is not much else to say about this movie. For a movie about a president, while it has its flaws, it does a good job of making it feel like it is not a biopic. The way it is directed feels like any other bad action movie. The cinematography was actually not that bad either.
An interesting note about the movie is the significance of Reagan being an actor before his presidency. There was a big conflict about him wanting to act and be a politician at the same time. In the movie, and in real life, his career as an actor put him in the spotlight. He was able to gain recognition from crowds and have a developed spotlight in the industry. Much like Reagan, Donald Trump also had an acting career before his presidency.
The line from a performer to a politician makes sense. They both need to be good at being in the spotlight, dealing with public hatred, and making an appearance on the big screen. Trump was in at least 10 movies during his time of acting while Reagan was in a whopping 53. The difference is that Reagan sought to become a politician even before his presidency while balancing acting–which is also seen in the movie–in comparison to Trump, who did not have much of a political background before his presidency.
It is interesting to see how Reagan sort of parallels some of our government today. While the movie was not all in my taste, at least they did not direct one on George W. Bush.