‘Reagan’ isn’t very good — but it highlights something important about today’s White House
nypost.comReagan,” the new biopic that opened last Friday.Playing the 40th president, Dennis Quaid is affable and charming. However, the movie — which clocks in at 2 hours and 15 minutes — was not the complex portrait I was expecting, but a hagiographic highlight reel.A portrait of sainthood.
And a shallow dive into the deep waters of Reagan’s extraordinary life, glossing over the messier parts of his administration — including the Iran Contra affair — ignoring the AIDS crisis and, perhaps most disappointing, there was no cameo of Mr T.
with Nancy Reagan (played by Penelope Ann Miller). The story itself is told by a fictional former KGB agent (Jon Voight) recounting the Gipper’s lifelong crusade to fight communism, and his role in the fall of the Soviet Union.In fighting the Russians, I was expecting some moments that made me feel even a tenth of what the “Rocky IV” training montage did: unbridled patriotism and the urge to run a few laps around the block.
It didn’t.There were, however, redeeming moments in revisiting themes from the Reagan era, like optimism and bipartisanship — a concept that disappeared a generation ago.And there was one especially poignant part of the film that made my heart swell: Reagan preparing for his famous 1987 speech in Berlin, when he appealed to the leader of the Soviet Union, “Mr.
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