I spent last Saturday night by myself in an empty theater watching a movie that I already knew I was going to dislike. I had to look an underpaid employee in the eye and say, “one ticket for ‘Reagan’ please”. I actually had to look two people in the eye and say that because I was in the snack line the first time, and that really rubbed salt in the wound. It was embarrassing. This whole project was embarrassing. It was not a fun time telling people that I wanted to see a piece of blatant conservative propaganda and then have to immediately backtrack and flounder my way through my explanation and condemnation of the movie and its politics. So why did I do this? First of all, I heard about all the trouble it took to get this movie out, and I thought that was interesting. It turns out this movie has been in production hell for a while. The idea was originally pitched in 2010, but struggled to find someone to finance it. Then when it finally did get the money, filming started in 2020, but then a bunch of people got COVID 19 and they had to shut down filming for a while. So it took them 14 years from pitch to release to get this movie out, and that’s never a good sign.
On top of that, the movie was also written by the guy who wrote “Gods not Dead: A light in Darkness” a movie which I have not seen, but I have seen the first two “Gods not Dead” movies and if it’s was anything like those then I figured it probably just as laughably bad. The movie was also directed by the same person who produced most of the show “Even Stevens” with Shia Labeouf, and that’s just funny. So part of the reason this piqued my interest was because I was prepared to watch a two hour long trainwreck, and at least get some feeling of schadenfreude out of it.
But on a less cynical note, I wanted to analyze it for what it is, propaganda created to reinforce a rightwing view of the world. I went into this movie with the understanding that this was not made for me. This was not made with the intention of converting left leaning adults to the MAGA cause. It was created to confirm the biases, and make money off, of the people that already agree with its portrayal of the Reagan years being a sort of mythical golden age. This is not inherently a terrible idea in some aspects.
I want to be crystal clear. I am the stereotypical campus commie that your mother warned you about. There is not a universe where I enjoy a movie that takes an uncritical look at Ronald Reagan’s career in politics. With that being said I also acknowledge that a lot of explicit conservative media sucks, not just from a political perspective, but from a critical perspective as well. Just look at the state of late night talk shows. Liberals and lefties get John Oliver, Steven Colbert, John Stuart, and a whole host of other comedians who are relatively funny. There’s some sense that the humor comes first and the politics comes second. What does the right have? Jesse Waters? Steven Crowder getting kicked out of Planet Fitness to make fun of trans people somehow? That’s not fair! And while I would argue that a lot of good mainstream media does cater to the right it’s just more implicit.
Look at “Top Gun: Maverik”. That entire movie functions as an Airforce recruitment film, and I remember hearing a lot of people on the left acknowledging that fact, but still enjoying it anyway. But it doesn’t come out and say “we should double our defense budget” it lets the audience come to that conclusion on their own. It’s not as overt as movies on the left can be like “Get Out” or any John Carpenter movie. But there isn’t a whole lot of media that is both explicitly and unapologetically right wing, religious, or both, that isn’t terrible in just about every way. On the surface, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing for conservatives to have good media that gives their intended audience a not so subtle thumbs up. I know a lot of conservatives. A lot of my family leans pretty far to the right. These people are not my enemies, so when I see them force out laughs through gritted teeth while watching Greg Gutfeld, I just kind of feel bad for them. So to have a movie that appeals to them, and that they could also potentially get something out of that isn’t just the same talking points they’ve heard over and over again, would be good I think.
I also want to make one more thing clear. When I say “propaganda” I do not mean that in a disparaging way. I mean it in the most literal way possible. When I say “propaganda” I mean the movie, to quote Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “ spreading ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” This definition applies to most pieces of media. Some of my favorite films of all time are anti-war propaganda pieces like “Full Metal Jacket”, “Johnny Got His Gun” and the original “All Quiet on the Western Front”. It’s all propaganda, and that’s ok I think. The issue is not with the propaganda itself, it’s with the quantity and how uncritically you consume it. When I say propaganda, I mean it in a neutral way, and if you are a conservative who has made it this far, I hope you can understand where I’m coming from and thank you for hearing me out so far.
The reason that I’m clarifying all this is because I want to extend an olive branch to the people on the other side of the political aisle. If you can acknowledge that “Reagan” is political propaganda I will do my best to judge and review this movie as objectively as possible for what it is trying to do. I don’t want to spend this entire review debunking Ronald Reagan’s policies or decisions, even though I totally could. I could spend this entire review talking about how Reagan was a specter for organized labor and protests as well as his malicious neglect of the AIDS epidemic, but I don’t think that’s really productive. I think it’s important to bring up so I can discuss this film in its appropriate context, but there’s just no point going much deeper than that. I guarantee whoever is reading this has a pretty entrenched stance on the man, whether you love him, hate him, or staunchly indifferent, I am not changing minds. What I can do is provide a review of the basic facts and let you decide if you could get anything out of watching this movie. And I will be bringing up politics in the actual review, but I am only doing it for the sake of critiquing the narrative, not because I want to change your mind. I also want to push most of that to the side because this movie is surprisingly not terrible.
This is a pretty low bar, but watching the movie I could tell that people really cared, not just about the politics, but filmmaking as an art form. I have watched a plethora of blatant conservative and religious propaganda pieces in my life and the one thing that I feel like they have in common is the fact that most of them just don’t feel like movie. It feels like you’re watching the film makers gradually go through a check list of all the talking points that they want to say and then haphazardly throw them together to create something that meets the loosest possible definition of a “movie”. “Reagan” doesn’t feel like that to me. There were quite a few interesting decisions and moments included that didn’t feel like they were just there to push an agenda, and that’s something that I can appreciate from a film like this. They did what they could on a relatively tight budget and they actually took some cinematic risks, and I respect that.
It’s not perfect though. I do feel like the plot structure is kind of jumbled and hard to follow at times. The entire movie is told through the perspective of a former KGB spy in the present day, so it’s not necessarily a linear story. And while I get what they are going for and it does work for the most part, I think this decision hinders the film to an extent. Also, since this is being narrated by a former KGB officer played by John Voight, that means that there are way too many Russian accents, and most of them are terrible, including Voight. I seriously had a hard time understanding most of the Russian characters, and while that might just be a me problem, it did make this film harder to watch.
The cinematography was also a bit hit or miss. The entire film is coated in the watered down filter which just makes the entire film look a lot darker than it has any right to be, and frankly that’s one of my biggest pet peeves with movies nowadays. So many of them are just way too dark. But there are genuinely some really good shots. Despite the drab overtone, “Reagan” does make use of some really sharp colors that pop out at you. I also thought this movie made good use of lighting. There’s this one scene with Reagan and Gorbachav and the lighting is very gray and serious which helps convey the tension of the scene. Subsequently there’s this scene where Nancy helps encourage Reagan to get back on the saddle again, and the lighting is very bright and yellow, and helps to convey that feeling of hopefulness. It’s basic but it’s nice.
But there were some narrative issues. Since this is an explicit propaganda piece about how amazing Rondal Reagan was, there wasn’t a whole lot of character growth. Reagan is portrayed as this omnipotent being who was always right and it’s everyone else who is wrong, despite the fact that his political views seemed to change over the course of his life. If you didn’t know, Reagan was initially a registered Democrat, but then flipped parties before running for governor, and this is barely acknowledged in the film. I think this is a huge opportunity. They could have focused on this aspect and had it be a genuine point of contention in the film and have him slowly change his mind and grow as a character . Instead he doesn’t change at all throughout the film because the filmmakers need to portray him as this superhuman being and the pinnacle of morality, and that’s just unrelatable and boring. This is a common trope in conservative media, and I just don’t get it. Don’t you want your heroes to be interesting? Can’t you acknowledge that some of the bad stuff they did if you think the good stuff drastically outweighs it? It just helps feed the perception that this kind of content is worthless.
I also just don’t think Dennis Quaid plays a very convincing Reagan. He sounds like Eric Cartman doing a Reagan impression and looks like Richard Nixon. The film incorporates just about every famous line Reagan ever said, from “tear down this wall” to “were you better off now than you were four years ago” and he just doesn’t get the cadence right. He also isn’t as charismatic. The real Reagan gave off this soft spoken easy going grandfather vibe. Dennis Quaid is just way too angry, and it just rubs me the wrong way. Ironically though I do think that portrays the Reagan years better than the movie was trying to do. Reagan’s kind demeanor was a facade for the horrific and dehumanizing policies of the administration, and Quaids portrayal of the man demonstrates how that mask has become cracked over the decades.
This is definitely one of the better pieces of right wing propaganda I’ve endured, but it still isn’t great. Lead singer of Creed, Scott Stapp, makes a cameo as Frank Sinatra, and that was the highlight of the film to me. It wasn’t the “so bad, it’s a good” event of the year I was anticipating it to be; it was just kind of generic and monotonous. Even if you agree with the message of the film I still can’t imagine people finding this movie anything but slightly tedious at least. Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a 19% at the time of me writing this, but the popcorn meter is at 98% so I guess I’m wrong about that, but I’m not sure how much of that high score is fueled by pure rage towards mainstream critics or an overcorrection by viewers seeing as this movie is a cut above the rest in terms of blatant far right fan service. Not the worst, but still not good even when you take politics out of the equation, and because of that I give this movie a 3.5/10. Still better than “The Exorcist: Believer”.
