Eastwood's Richard Jewell shows how naming a suspect can ruin a life - but how close is this movie to the facts?

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell has the characteristic Eastwood stance: A man standing tall in a world of debased morals and institutional corruption. This movie is based on a magazine article and a book about the eponymous Jewell, who was named, unjustly, as the key suspect in the 1996 bombing at the Olympic games in Atlanta. It's actually based loosely on the facts, so it's probably best to just take this movie as a drama rather than as a biopic - though to be honest if the entire story were a fabrication the movie wouldn't be all that interesting, so take it as you will. CE, however, does a really good job, especially at the set-up, as he establishes Jewell as a social misfit and law-enforcement wannabe (anyone who's spent time among law-enforcement people has come across this type) - played very well throughout by the unknown, to me, Paul Walker Hauser, and his inexperienced but indefatigable attorney, played by Sam Rockwell. For those who don't know, Jewell was a security guard at the Olympic stadium; he spotted a suspicious backpack and alerted police officers, who reluctantly cleared the crowd away from the backpack, which eventually exploded, killing 2 and injuring many. The FBI immediately ID's Jewell as a suspect entirely because of his weird personality and his eagerness to be recognized as part of law enforcement. What we see, then, is the FBI taking an upper-cut from Eastwood, as they are so enamored of "profiling" to lead to suspects - see the Season 2 of Mindhunter, which of course championed profiling as the key to solve the terrifying Atlanta mass-murder case; here we see the agency gone awry, not concerned with evidence but assuming they had the right guy because he fit the profile (John Hamm plays the FBI heavy). Whether this is close to the facts or not I can't say - but I can confidently say that CE's portrayal of newspaper culture is absurd: The stop-at-nothing sexy female reporter is ridiculous, right from the first scene when she berates her colleagues because they can't get enough stories on page one; there are many egotistic and eccentric reporters, but the culture is not one of territorial competition, and it's hard to believe the Atlanta Journal-Constitution would name a suspect based on one shaky leak from the FBI (why Hamm would leak this info is also hard to fathom). Nevertheless, it is true that once Jewell's name was out there the media wouldn't let him alone - the news frenzy is in fact believable - and it took years for him to clear his name (i.e., once another suspect came to light), even though none of the evidence in the case pointed to him. The movie overall is one of Job-like suffering rather than of character development or plot complexity, but within that scope there are some powerful scenes and a fair indictment of those who would go off the page and identify a suspect before bringing charges; in practice, the FBI is notably strict on this matter, but something when wrong in the Jewell case - though CE's surmise as to how the case against Jewell leaked to the press is not convincing.