LBJ

Synopsis: When JFK is assassinated on November 22, 1963 Lyndon Baines Johnson (Woody Harrelson) steps into the Presidency, acutely aware that he has none of the charisma of his predecessor nor even a common political agenda.

Rob Reiner is a mainstream director whose last film of note was The Bucket List in 2007 and whose career-best work was in the 1980s and early ‘90s with A Few Good Men (1992), When Harry Met Sally (1989) and This is Spinal Tap (1984). It’s solid if unremarkable fare and pretty much the same can be said of LBJ.

Coming hard on the heels (although it was actually made in 2016) of the currently screening Chappaquiddick which dealt with Ted Kennedy’s unfortunate legacy, LBJ is a sympathetic portrait of Johnson as a Southern political war horse who had greatness thrust upon him and who did his best not to make a hash of things. He achieved this largely, at least according to this film, by continuing JKF’s commitment to civil rights although it is almost disconcertingly quiet on his escalation of the Vietnam War, something which only merits a footnote in the end titles along with his other less-high profile achievements.

The bulk of the film is thus concerned with Johnson’s moral bona fides which are portrayed by cutting back and forth between the Dallas assassination and the immediate past which sees the Senator for Texas abandon his own tilt for the Oval Office to become Kennedy’s Vice-President. In particular it is concerned with his commitment to civil rights. Frankly it was not great but it was a good deal more liberal or perhaps we should say politically pragmatic than some of his Southern colleagues, in particular Senator Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins) of Georgia, an unapologetic segregationist.

In the lead role Woody Harrelson sporting some impressive prosthetic work does an effective job as Johnson. Although not in the league of Gary Oldman’s turn as Churchill in Darkest Hour either in terms of make-up or acting Harrelson brings us a plain-speaking old trooper of evidently limited charm (“crassly abrasive” would be a better description), a man for whom John Wayne would no doubt have been an ideal role model, who struggles doggedly to win the respect of his overwhelmingly much-younger, Ivy League colleagues in the Kennedy Administration. Jennifer Jason Leigh, sporting her own share of prosthetics, has very little to do as Lady Bird, his supportive wife. Somewhat less effectively cast and even a tad disconcerting are Michael Stahl-David and Jeffrey Donovan as Bobby and Jack Kennedy both of whom look little like their well-known real-life referents.

All this is solidly engaging if relatively dry material that stands quite well with Chappaquiddick as a portrait of back-room politicking. Unfortunately in the film’s latter stages it permutes from sympathetic to hagiographic supplying Johnson with a couple clearly invented confrontations with Russell in which he articulates some kind of epiphany on the race issue before giving him a Dead Poets Society-like (1969) standing ovation as he introduces Kennedy’s Civil Right Bill to Congress. The time spent on this could have been put to better use giving us a more rounded portrait of the man.

The 1960s was the most compelling decade of the 20th century and America was at the heart of it so with raw material like this it's hard to go completely wrong. In this respect LBJ is a worthy addition to the filmic catalogue of the period even if it is a minor one. 

 

Want something different?