Movie Review: Reagan

Reagan is a biography of Ronald Reagan, an actor who became a two-term governor of California and a two-term president of the United States. This is a more traditional sort of biography: There is no attempt to go smoothly from one major part of his life to another. Instead, it focuses in great detail on certain strategic moments. For instance, it completely skips his negotiating with Congress to pass massive tax cuts that made the economy prosper. But it focuses in surprising detail on the Reykjavik summit with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons, down to his wearing an ordinary suit despite the cold, to look more like a leader.

The movie wisely does not cover the fifty-three films he made. Instead, it focuses on his successful attempts to prevent Communists from taking over the Screen Actors Guild, a struggle that many of his fans are not aware of.

The theme of Reagan is his unfaltering opposition to Communism. He did what he could when he was governor of California, but it was when he became president that the movie compellingly shows his victory after victory.

Reagan was completed in 2021. Dennis Quaid, who has had quite the film career, had reached the level of gravitas by then to portray the president. There are uncanny scenes in the film when he sounds like Reagan, and he even looks like Reagan for a few moments. Penelope Ann Miller does a sprightly job of portraying his wife Nancy. For fans of Kevin Sorbo, he does a brief appearance as the minister of the Disciples of Christ church where Reagan was raised.

Some have accused this movie of hagiography. (The proper use of this term has to do with pious accounts of the lives of saints. In movies and literature, it is a highly critical term that means a biography that portrays the subject as someone who can do no wrong, and which leaves out any problems.) This is not true. Reagan spends a surprising amount of time on his making schlock commercials at the bottom of his acting career, so that he bitterly referred to himself as a “clown.” It also shows the Iran-Contra scandal, and Reagan finally admitting in a speech that his administration had indeed traded arms for hostages. And it does show the tragic nature of his Alzheimer’s, when he could not remember he had once been president.

This movie should be recommended to everyone who is too young to remember those years.

The funniest line in the movie occurs after Soviet Premier Brezhnev dies, followed in quick succession by Andropov and Chernenko. A frustrated Reagan slams down a phone and asks, “How can I establish communications with them when they keep dying on me?”

These were crucial and dangerous times, and the movie shows us Ronald Reagan’s role in them.