In an industry that is sometimes criticized for playing it safe and holding back honesty, actor Paul Walter Hauser is like a breath of fresh air. Following him on social media, you’ll find that he’s refreshingly honest, even going as far as to criticize his own work. Like many cinephiles out there, he’s also an active user on Letterboxd, rating films left and right on the app, including his own. It was one such recent rating, for his 2019 film Richard Jewell, that got the attention of someone on X, and it’s because his rating wasn’t positively glowing.
On X, Hauser took the time to respond to a user who noticed his Letterboxd rating of Richard Jewell, a film in which he was directed by Clint Eastwood and played the titular character, was a bit low given his ample participation in the film. The user wrote, “Paul Walter Hauser giving Richard Jewell as 3.5 on Letterboxd, a movie in which he quite literally plays the title character, is one of the funnier things I’ve come across on that app.” Hauser’s response was pretty honest, and it actually makes a lot of sense. He mentions classics such as The Shawshank Redemption, which he considers a 5/5 film, and thinks it’s fair that he would rate Richard Jewell a 3.5 because it’s not a classic, even though he was in it.
“If I think The Shawshank Redemption and Schindler’s List are 5/5, and Richard Jewell is not a perfect movie/bonafide classic, what’s wrong with giving an honest rating? It’s a good film that is definitely worth watching. A 3.5 out of 5 is not a slight. It’s a reality.”
Hauser is no stranger to rating his films and perhaps Doug Liman, Matt Damon, and Casey Affleck should be more offended because he gave The Instigators, where he’s featured in a small supporting role, a 2.5. Meanwhile, he was much more kind to Inside Out (4/5), Americana (4/5), and Cruella (4.5/5). In addition to giving the unreleased Sydney Sweeny film Americana a solid 4-stars, he also spoke highly of his co-star on his X page and said she was one of the smartest people he’s worked with. This is all meant to say, Hauser tells it like it is.
‘Richard Jewell’ Was Well-Received by Critics
Directed by Eastwood from a screenplay by Billy Ray, Richard Jewell is based on the 1997 Vanity Fair article “American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell” and the 2019 book The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle. The film details the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing and the aftermath after security guard Richard Jewell (Hauser) finds a bomb during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, which saves lives, only to be wrongfully accused of planting the bombing himself. The film also stars Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, and Olivia Wilde.
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The movie received solid reviews upon release, earning a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was named as one of the ten best films of the year by the National Board of Review. For her work in the film, Bates was also nominated for a Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Jewell’s mother, Barbara “Bobi” Jewell. Despite its critical success, the film only did moderate business at the box office, grossing $44.6 million on a $45 million budget.
If you wish to challenge Hauser’s Richard Jewell rating, you’ll have to buy it or rent it digitally, or, better yet, get a physical copy because it’s not streaming anywhere at the moment. Also, in the wake of this story being picked up by trades, he said he’s done talking about movies on social media for a bit. Could be serious. It may be a joke. Sometimes you can never really tell with him, but he’s always entertaining.
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