Reagan the Movie: A Review

Here is my review of Reagan (2024), the best film of a politician that I have seen.  The usual warning as to spoilers is given.

There have been very few movies on American presidents.  Washington’s presidency has been the focus of one miniseries in the eighties.  Lincoln has only been the subject of a handful of movies.  Theodore Roosevelt has a movie celebrating his role in organizing the Rough Riders, but only one movie about him as  president, and that as a side character.  Wilson has a movie focusing on his presidency, Wilson (1944), a box office failure.   FDR has Sunrise at CampoBello which focuses on his struggle against the paralysis which afflicted him as an adult.  World War 2 miniseries and movies have him as a side character.  Movies on the remaining presidents tend to focus on one event in their presidencies, if that.

The Reagan movie breaks the mold in that it covers the entire arc of his eventful life.  Dennis Quaid does a masterful job as Reagan.  Superb makeup makes him look like Reagan and he manages the difficult job of successfully mimicking the very distinctive Reagan voice.  Penelope Ann Miller becomes Nancy Reagan, a woman whose whole life was her love for her husband, and the love between her and Reagan is a constant focus of the film.

The movie is set in contemporary times with Jon Voight, as a retired KGB agent, explaining to a rising Russian politician how Reagan, who he calls The Crusader, was largely responsible for the destruction of the Soviet Union. Voight notes that it was the goal of Reagan to beat communism without firing a shot.

The movie follows Reagan from boyhood to his last horse ride, as Alzheimer’s takes its toll on Reagan.  It is not a straight line progression, but events in Reagan’s life come up as Voight brings up some aspect of Reagan.  It is an effective method in the film.  Reagan brings out that Reagan became president not out of ambition, but in order to dismantle the Soviet Union and to free its subjects.  Voight calls Reagan The Crusader because that is what he was.

I lived through the age of Reagan, my awareness of politics beginning as a small boy listening to Reagan’s speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater, and the movie captures  well the look and sound of this time from the early sixties to the early nineties.  Reagan’s career in politics is shown in vignettes as Voight discusses how Reagan rose to become president.

Few things are drier than politics.  The film avoids this with heaps of humor, along with the drama, which fits Reagan’s constant use of humor to gently make his political points.

The film’s treatment of his presidency begins with Reagan’s almost assassination, only days into his first term, and his belief that God had preserved him for a purpose, and that whatever time he had left belonged to Him.  Voight mentions how the friendship and alliance that Reagan struck with Pope John Paul II, with the help of the Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, sounded doom for the Soviet Union.

The film has a chilling sequence with Reagan in the war room in 1983, dealing with a nuclear alert in which it was thought that the Soviets were launching a pre-emptive first strike.  It was  caused by a flock of birds, with Reagan noting that the nuclear stand off with the Soviets was madness and would sooner or later end in annihilation of the Earth.

The film skillfully notes how Reagan used the Strategic Defense Initiative, “Star Wars”, to bring the Soviets to the negotiation table.  In a comic sequence we see the funerals in rapid succession of Brezhnev (1982), Andropov (1984) and Chernenko (1985).  With the accession of Gorbachev, the Soviets acknowledged, begrudgingly, that they could not keep up with the US in military technology, and Reagan, while happy to negotiate with Gorbachev, refused to give up SDI, leaving the Soviets to face the fact that they had to give up the arms race with the US, the major factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, after the failing Soviet economy.

The film deals tastefully with Reagan falling victim to Alzheimer’s, with Reagan taking one last horse ride, due to his failing faculties, a scene that is joyous rather than tragic.

Stick around for the ending credits for some good Easter eggs.

Reagan was not a conventionally religious man, but he was a man with a strong faith in God, and that permeates the entire film.

A great film, and a fitting tribute to our fortieth president, the greatest president of my life time.  Highly recommended.