Writer/director Barry Levinson is on to something: he’s cornering the market with the anodyne TV movie portrait of real-life middle age men. And in the era of edgy, envelope-pushing PeakTV, he’s got little competition. It’s unclear if they’ll go for the threepeat, but Levinson, actor Al Pacino and cable network HBO have made back to back passable dramas in the safe telefilm space following the equally mild Jack Kevorkian drama “You Don’t Know Jack.” In a performance that’s not all that radically different, perhaps a teeny bit more “Grumpy Old Men,” Pacino plays the titular Joe “Paterno,” the shamed Penn State football coach whose swift dishonor set a land speed record for one of the fastest falls from grace in the history of college sports.
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In a ranking of appalling sports scandals, ESPN didn’t even bother including the 2011’s Penn State child sex abuse scandal— the offenses of commonplace cheating paling in comparison to the vile crimes committed at the school where a retired assistant coach (Jerry Sandusky) was indicted on child molestation charges. In the chaos of a story that broke like wildfire on national TV, swift, wrathful outrage swept through the college leaving many key Penn State officials careers in ruin for their participation in the cover-up. Paterno never faced criminal charges, but in the court of public opinion, his sentence for failing to do more (and possibly concealing information), was damning. In the end, the most victorious coach in the history of NCAA FBS football was unceremoniously fired.
Seven years later, the incident still taints Penn State, and “Paterno” illustrates that the morbid fascination with this tragedy hasn’t at all receded. Unfortunately for the viewer, that fascination doesn’t translate to anything half as gripping as the story that dramatically unfolded on national TV over just a number of weeks, nor the 2014 Amir Bar-Lev-directed documentary on the subject “Happy Valley.”
Set largely between the whirlwind two weeks of Paterno’s demise (he was fired, diagnosed with cancer, and dead within the span of two viciously speedy months), the HBO movie centers on its titular subject, the beloved JoPa (Pacino), as he was affectionately known, the righteous, but also a venerable, educator who boasted an 85% graduating track record for his players. Paterno not only embodied football at Penn State, but its sterling reputation for being the best.
Commenting on the question of moral responsibility—which feels quaint in today’s day and age of vanished decency—Levinson’s drama also tracks two opposite lanes of experience: one of an inexperienced young cub reporter (Riley Keough) who breaks the Paterno story in a local paper and eventually wins a Pulitzer Prize at the age of 22 for her stellar reporting, and Paterno, whose wisdom ultimately fails him. Told in flashback—a dying Paterno undergoing an MRI scan that attempts to awaken his memory, or at least come to terms honestly with what he knew—this framing device doesn’t particularly serve the story well. At best, it feels awfully familiar; a man trying to come to term with his failings by flipping through the pages of a memory already not really inclined to examine much other than how to score touchdowns.
While “Paterno” is competent and adequately made, one cannot help but compare it to the aforementioned “Happy Valley,” the scorching and far superior 2016 documentary and layered exploration of legacy, accountability, and America’s tendency to tear down its heroes, that left the viewer reeling with notions of morality and ethical responsibility with no easy answers. For all intents and purposes, “Paterno” largely plays out like beat by beat remake of the doc more so than it is a dramatization of the real-life events.
Levinson of late—who also directed the forgettable HBO movie “The Wizard of Lies” and executive-produced the “Phil Spector” HBO film starring none other than Al Pacino—has a real knack for inoffensive, perfectly safe drama that feels fossilized from another era of TV of at least 10 years ago. “Paterno” is largely no different.
Some of the big questions posed in “Happy Valley” and by sports pundits far and wide was just how aware JoPa was, how much did he know and did he do enough? Could he have done more than just report an incident once and or was he involved in the cover-up that landed other Penn State school officials in jail? If you’re looking for those answers in “Paterno,” Levinson’s (fairly) objective approach wisely doesn’t provide them, but he doesn’t make them alluringly ambiguous either. There’s more half-hearted clues, hints and fits and starts of self-reflection on the part of the coach that just never amount to much either emotionally or dramatically.
Of course, we’ll never know and neither will Levinson, but the neither here nor there-ness of the film is rather in keeping with its bland direction and ho-hum tameness. If anything, “Paterno” mostly points to inexcusable indifference and “this is none of my business” apathy. “What am I, omniscient here?” Paterno asks rhetorically if he knew what transpired. Paterno never fully appreciates the gravity of the growing scandal nor the potential severity of the consequences. That’s potentially accurate, but it sure doesn’t provide the viewer with any empathy for its subject. And therein lies the rub? Who does Levinson actually want the audience to sympathize with in this movie? The protagonist? No. The victims? Sure, but it’s never ever about them and all about JoPa. “Paterno” really wants us to grapple with ethical responsibility, but there’s one thing with leaving the viewer to decide for themselves, and another by taking such a removed stance from judgment that the viewer struggles to care at all.
It’s a nice idea, but in this colorless, sometimes melodramatic milieu, it’s almost as if he’s trying to punt away responsibility. Ultimately, “Paterno,” more of a Movie Of The Week than anything, doesn’t provide much insight into its subject, his self-reflection and his possible guilt or even remorse. “Paterno” might want to illuminate the consequences of turning a blind eye on sins, but in its murky fumbling of the story, it rarely ever shines a light on the righteous truth. [C]