Richard Jewell is Clint Eastwood's latest film to go small

The director has lately focused on footnotes to recent history

Clint Eastwood has been directing movies for nearly 50 years. Given that experience and his age (nearly 90), it's a little bit surprising he's been so fixated lately on recent American history. He's been focusing on historically-rooted stories for a while, covering World War II (Flags of Our Fathers; Letters from Iwo Jima) and the postwar period (J. Edgar; Jersey Boys), as well as the second war in Iraq (American Sniper). But over the past five years, Eastwood has been dramatizing a series of smaller contemporary events, usually predicated on the actions of seemingly regular men thrust into unusual circumstances and performing heroic acts.

Sully recreated the famous Hudson River plane crash saved from disaster by its graceful pilot; The 15:17 to Paris recreated a terrorist attack halted by three vacationing military guys; and now Richard Jewell recreates the 1996 bombing of the Atlanta Olympics, following the man who discovered the bomb and was later accused of planting it. All three films sit at a strange, compelling intersection between Eastwood's straightforward style, his libertarian politics, the moral ambiguity of his best movies, and a lack of conventional drama that represents some of his most experimental work.

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Jesse Hassenger

Jesse Hassenger's film and culture criticism has appeared in The Onion's A.V. Club, Brooklyn Magazine, and Men's Journal online, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, where he also writes fiction, edits textbooks, and helps run SportsAlcohol.com, a pop culture blog and podcast.