Just like seeing Mary Queen of Scots shortly after The Favourite, it feels a little strange watching this straightforward political drama just after the chaotic and unconventional Vice. However, that doesn’t mean that The Front Runner isn’t an enjoyable watch. It helps if you remember the events at the time, and I was just beginning to become interested in politics when Senator Gary Hart made his presidential run in 1988. Comfortably ahead in the polls, it seemed almost certain that he was going to succeed Ronald Reagan and regain the White House for the Democrats. But, when The Miami Herald found evidence of his infidelity, his campaign fell apart.
Director and co-writer (with Jay Carson and Matt Bai), Jason Reitman, makes the sensible decision to concentrate on Hart’s campaign, the machinations of his team and the reaction within newspaper offices, as the scandal occurs. We don’t see him with his mistress, Donna Rice, or even inside the house that the relationship takes place. Reitman establishes his tone from the outset, his camera roaming around a voracious media scrum, the dialogue almost drowned out by the cacophonous noise. From then on, it’s a film that rewards your concentration as ideas about how our public officials should behave, or need to behave, in their private lives are examined.
That may sound dull, but I found it is gripping as many thrillers. Hugh Jackman is okay on the lead but the best performances are amongst the supporting cast. It’s hard to single people out but JK Simmons is very good as his campaign manager and Molly Ephraim is terrific as a compassionate and fiercely intelligent staffer.
These events may have only played out 30 years ago, but it in many ways it feels like longer than that. It’s not only in peripheral ways as people rummage through their pockets for dimes for a pay phone or rush to fax machines. But also it’s hard to believe that such behaviour sound scupper a political career these days, at least for a man. The current resident of the address that Gary Hart was striving to reach is clear evidence of that.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10