Just like The Iron Lady, this film is not able to deliver the goods and live up to the figure it chronicles.

Leo DiCaprio gave a good performance here but it was a very shaky story. There was never a sense that you were delving into the character of Hoover beyond the well known murmurings that he was gay. Quite frankly, so what? It felt that this film overplayed that angle time and again. What about his controversial dictator-like control over actual elected presidents and what that says about the human condition.

Any elected official will have issues that rankle with them far beyond their time in elected office as well as the narcissistic need to effectively shape their legacy. This legacy issue was something the script alludes to very loosely (it felt tacked on to give meaning as opposed to a central tenet) and fails to capitalise on. Hoover appeared to have no real political leanings other than to protect the US (if you're to follow the narrative in the film) and that this was goal was ultimately polluted by his own ambition, which led to a different danger facing the US. A fundamental stamping on the freedoms that Hoover stated as his goal to remove communists from the country. There's an irony in his suppression of attempts to remove him.

Clint Eastwood didn't have a huge amount to work with, IMO, and the script was all over the place, really. There needed to be a central thrust beyond an exploration of his sexuality. It's so trivial that this was the focus. He was seemingly a man of substance and this film should've done more to explore his actions and its reverberations on American society and how his eventual departure led to term limits for his role, etc. What does this say about the role of power in democratic societies when its official behave like the despots that shape non-democratic societies. God, it's possible to go on forever with questions and this script just never attempts to pose questions. If it had been a swashbuckling affair clearly concerned with entertainment, I could've accepted that, but it failed on that count, too.

J. Edgar is just a little disappointing and shallow like The Iron Lady. It's not that they were bad films. It's just that both had subject material (and figures) laden with rich Oscar potential and both opportunities were squandered in my mind by a failure to produce anything substantial. Hoover and Thatcher were leaders with convictions and strength, and as such, I think these films should've reflected that and been strong in narrative and conviction.

Such is life.

I love Eastwood, but this was a total misfire (as well as a snoozefest). Personally I thought the makeup looked downright silly. I'm not sure if Clint is suffering from Alzheimer's but some of the scenes made absolutely no sense whatsoever. More specifically, Edgar proposes to helen gandy, she refuses (because they're on their first date), and then Edgar asks her to be his secretary. and she accepts the position without any hesitation whatsoever. i literally yelled out, "what the f uck?" in the the theater.

these psedo-oscar bait films are pissing me off. they strive for one thing and one thing only yet ultimately fail in the end. let's start by having a cohesive story line...

I've rarely seen an Eastwood film that had such a vague narrative.
Just when I thought The Hereafter was his most meandering effort, along comes J. Edgar.

A hamfisted plodding affair besmirched by spotty make up.
I could never assign much logic or emotional through threads to tie things together.

I watched this and The Iron Lady the same night.
After four hours, I was genuinely baffled how these projects were so mediocre.
At least Streep kept me engaged in that film. No such luck here.

Perhaps the prestige packaging blinded them to the scripts' shortcomings.

E.D.

Oh God was this movie boring.

And to top that off, it mostly covered it's ass by saying it was all a dream.  

The make-up wasn't even very good for most of it.   And some of the acting was terrible.  Leonardo was sooooo miscast.  

There were a couple of scenes that worked but the rest of it, bah!

I think it would have been more interesting if they told the story from the POV of his secretary.

Really, even if you're FBI-curious -- don't subject yourself to this film.