If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

One of the most entertaining ways to learn about history is to see it unfold on the big screen. Sure, a good documentary can be very informative, but with those you're confined to seeing interviews, grainy stock footage and still photos. Some may use reenactments, but they tend to be hokey. The problem with Hollywood history, however, is poetic license. You really never know the historical accuracy of what you are watching. Sometimes, especially with a biopic, you kind of have to apply poetic license in order to make it more entertaining. Sometimes they succeed like the films "Frost/Nixon" (2008) and the George Bush biopic "W." (2008). Sometimes they are accurate and entertaining like "The Aviator" (2004) and "Ray" (2004). The problem with this film is that the facts surrounding the life of J. Edgar Hoover are contested among historians. Mix that in Tinseltown and there's no knowing what's real and what's not. In "J. Edgar" they clearly exploit the juicy rumors of his lifestyle that was taboo at the time, although after doing some research it seems as they these rumors have been disproved. The few facts we can agree on is that J. Edgar Hoover was the brains behind establishing the US FBI as we know it today, and he was a pioneer in forensic science, particularly in his contribution of initializing the creation of a fingerprint database. The film takes us through his life as he politically battles communism and the influence of the Bolsheviks, right through the presidency of Richard Nixon. What more, we learn from the movie that Hoover had a tendency of sensationalizing everything he did. He did it so often he truly began to believe the exaggerated version of events over what really happened. This only farther blurs the lines between reality and fiction. I'm normally not a big Leonardo DiCaprio fan, but I thought he did well with this role. Quite frankly I'm a little surprised he didn't receive more recognition for this role. I thought it was better than some of the other roles he's played that received more merit. I've never heard J. Edgar Hoover speak, but according to this film he had an accent I didn't care for. If that's how he really spoke then so be it, but it was kind of annoying. Hoover lived his entire life in Washington, DC so I'm not sure what the accent was. It sounded almost like Boston, but I think it was supposed to be a slight southern drawl. The bottom line is J. Edgar Hoover led an interesting life. Couple that with some creative screenwriting and you have an entertaining film. Just don't quote this move as a source in an intellectual conversation.

Human history has great heroes, great villains and a few people in between. John Edgar Hoover, FBI's father, is one of those obscure and shadowy characters who stands between good and evil. But the most paradoxical is that we know very little about him, despite his towering position and the sheer amount of stories, rumors and theories surrounding him.Clint Eastwood is directed this movie, and the mere fact of making a film about such a vague and amorphous man is a show of courage. On the other hand, it's clearly necessary to take as facts some of the rumors surrounding him. Otherwise, there would be no material to make the film. For example, it's true that Hoover earned a reputation for being homosexual, but the truth is that, against what the film suggests, this fame has never been proven. The film becomes more accurate when it comes to his career, the way he created and developed the FBI, how he promoted forensic science etc. One detail that particularly delighted me was seeing Hoover dictate his memories in a blistering, exaggerated way. With this, the film reveals more than truth... it reveals us what may have been the essence of the personality of a man who has always sought to control what others thought or knew. If knowledge means power, Hoover always made sure no one knew him, or knew only what he wanted. About the script and the story told I just felt some difficulty with the constant flashbacks and flash-forwards. I feel that this hindered my perception of time and the order of events. But that was a minor problem, at least for me.Leo DiCaprio brilliantly secured the lead role. He is an excellent actor and, once again, offered us an excellent performance of a very complicated and ambiguous character. I must also point out his excellent characterization and costume design... this allowed him to play an older, fatter, and grumpier Hoover with the same quality he employed in the ambitious, hard-working boy. Naomi Watts and Armie Hammer were very good at supporting characters, even though Hammer was so ostensibly homosexual that I would have preferred to see him adopting a more contained and ambiguous posture in this regard, leaving the audience to think what they wanted. Equally impeccable and wonderful, Judy Dench gives us a great performance in a character that appears few times, but it marks our mind whenever it appears.For half a century, Hoover was an unassailable man who knew the most sordid secrets of the American elite and did not hesitate to use them to challenge anyone who opposed him. Despite this, he lived his professional and personal life in an extremely discreet way, away from the spotlight, like an office bureaucrat. His life was lived under the motto "knowing is power". That is why he is so vague, Machiavellian and fascinating. And this film, instead of capturing an elusive "truth," perfectly captured the enigmatic and ambiguous side of the man behind the FBI director's desk.

Clint Eastwood's films are extremely historically accurate. The academy and critics love his work and especially the way he manages to get the best out of his leading roles. That being said, his films also tend to be extremely long and very dry, J. Edgar was no different. J. Edgar Hoover was the man who started the FBI. He is the man solely responsible for creating a fingerprint database, cataloging and investigating forensic evidence at crime scenes, and he was also completely paranoid and spied on just about everyone he could. It was sad to see just how lonely, narrow minded, and repressed this man was his whole life. He was so narrowly focused his entire life, that he didn't seem to ever enjoy anything besides his work. As for the film, Leonardo DiCaprio gives another stunning performance, one that rivals all his other work. People who worked with Hoover, in his later years, say that DiCaprio was so good that it was like seeing Hoover himself back in charge. When he was first starting out, people thought DiCaprio was just another pretty face, who would do films like the Beach his entire career, but they couldn't be more wrong. He has emerged as one of the best leading men in all of Hollywood and J. Edgar is a prime example of this. You can't have a DiCaprio greatest hits compilation without including this performance, it really was that good. I learned a lot from this film and the performances were truly fantastic in every sense of the word. How DiCaprio's performance didn't get nominated for an Academy Awards is beyond me and does lend some credence to the theory that the Academy is bias towards him. As for the rest of the film, it's long, very long and parts of it just don't move at all. You'll learn a lot and from a historic stand point, I think this is one of those film everyone should see, but at times it's not easy to sit through. Don't expect much in the way of action, comic relief, or deviation. It's just a lot of vintage Eastwood, DiCaprio, and criminal justice history.

Great, reasonably balanced, biopic on a highly controversial figureA study on J Edgar Hoover, famed long-serving director of the FBI. Explores his drivers and motivations, and personal life. Told through flashbacks as he narrates his career for his biography, we see how he built the FBI from scratch, some of his higher-profile cases (eg the Lindbergh baby), his obsession with Communists and anyone else he deemed enemies of the US and his relationship with Clyde Tolson, Assistant Director of the FBI, closest confidant and more. A good study on a controversial, divisive, almost mystical, figure in US history. Not entirely complimentary, it gives a stark, and balanced, look at a very powerful, shaping force figure in US history.Great performance from Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. Good support from Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts.