Director Rob Reiner’s “LBJ,” starring Woody Harrelson facially encased in latex and makeup best categorized as a good try, arrives in theaters a year after its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, and 16 months after “All the Way” (Bryan Cranston reprising his juicy Tony Award-winning performance) debuted on HBO.
The timing puts this latest LBJ screen portrait at a disadvantage. It’s a passably engaging biopic focusing on a few short and hugely eventful years in the life of the 36th U.S. president. But it wouldn’t raise questions about Harrelson’s prostheses and makeup, for starters, if the drama carried more urgency.
HBO’s “All the Way” began with Johnson’s momentous Nov. 27, 1963, address to Congress, five days after the JFK assassination. “LBJ” uses that speech, part eulogy and part declaration of civil rights principles, as a climax, not a prologue. The script by Joey Hartstone returns to the assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, over and over, as a motif, while focusing on Johnson’s vice presidency under Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan, all lockjaw vowel sounds, every second). The film’s especially harsh in its portrayal of attorney general Robert F. Kennedy (Michael Stahl-David) as a steely weasel of an operator, initially uncomprehending of Johnson’s usefulness.
Here’s what you don’t get in “LBJ.” You don’t get any conspiracy theories regarding the assassination. You don’t get more than a muttered sentence or two about the war in Vietnam (Johnson’s ultimate political undoing). What you get is a straightfoward, frustratingly mild portrait of a big man who, in “Hamilton”-speak, wanted to be in the room where it happened, but who really just wanted to be loved and respected.