Reagan (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Sean McNamara

Starring:  Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller, Robert Davi, Jon Voight, Mena Suvari

Surely Ronald Reagan had faults.  Not that you would know it from watching Reagan, which portrays the late 40th president as something just short of saintly.  The narrative of Reagan is that Ronald Reagan despised communists from the get-go and worked his entire life to bringing down the Soviet Union.  That dream was eventually realized two years following Reagan's exit from office in 1989.  Reagan is a story of the Reagan presidency which had to be more complex than the movie shows here.  Reagan doesn't inspire us to love, hate, or want to learn more about its subject.  Even its narrator, a Soviet spy named Viktor (Voight) can't help but admire the man the movie believes brought down his beloved country.

We can surmise the collapse of the Soviet Union was brought on by economic and other factors besides just the Cold War with the United States.   Reagan stars Dennis Quaid as the president and begins back in the 1940's when Reagan was an actor who soon became President of the Screen Actors Guild as his acting career faded.  He was married to actress Jane Wyman (Suvari), but if you blink you may miss that.  Instead, the movie focuses on Nancy Davis (Miller), who became his second wife and eventual First Lady.  

Reagan begins with the 1981 assassination attempt in which Reagan survived and then reverts to the 1940's when Reagan was a well-known actor, but whose career was on a downswing.  The movie runs nearly 2 1/2 hours and feels every bit of it, even though it whooshes past certain periods of Reagan's life without much insight or depth.  Reagan is mostly superficial.  The Quaid performance gets the speech cadence and the mannerisms of Reagan right, and he does what he can, but the movie simply doesn't give us more than a glimpse of the former president.