Review: 'Paterno'

 

Any film that attempts to tackle the complex story of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is facing a daunting challenge. Few sports stories have as quick and messy a fall from grace as Paterno's exit from the Nittany Lions. In October 2011,  Paterno became the winningest coach in college football history with his 409th victory. Within two weeks he was gone from the university after a grand jury indicted his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on 40 counts of child sex abuse. The abuse was reported to have gone on for more than two decades and at best Paterno was seen as someone who should have responded sooner to complaints of Sandusky's behavior. So the university's board of trustees removed Paterno from his job and within two months he had died from the complications of lung cancer at the age of 84.

HBO's "Paterno" stars Al Pacino as the growly, irascible Paterno and with the telefilm directed by Barry Levinson, you would expect the end result would be a well-acted. sharply written story. And indeed that's the case, but the problem is "Paterno" can't quite seem to decide what kind of film it wants to be. So the end result is that the movie is a well-made sometimes confusing mix of genres, as the projects veers from sports movie to family drama to journalistic investigation. It's as if Levinson didn't have a clear perspective on how he felt about Paterno and that uncertainty seeped into the final results.

"Paterno" opens with Pacino in a CT scanner and the rest of movie is structured basically as a string of near-death flashbacks. There's the scene of an already frail Paterno winning his 409th victory, dealing with questions with his family and lazily watching game films interspersed with a young local reporter's investigation of Sandusky. Played by Riley Keough, reporter and Penn State alum named Sara Ganim works to uncover the truth while dealing with the natural reluctance to air the dirty laundry of a university she still cares about deeply.

Ironically, despite Pacino's star billing, the most interesting parts of "Paterno" center around the complex feelings exhibited by people around Paterno as they learn the true scope of the scandal. Kathy Baker plays Sue Paterno and while she's almost criminally under-used in the film, her character as well as the couple's children are often the most interesting part of the movie. They struggle to sort out just how much Paterno knew and when he knew it. No one wants to believe that someone they love could have known about the evils being committed by Sandusky and not done something to stop it. But often even that contemplation is hobbled by clumsy, heavy-handed stylistic directing by the usually reliable Levinson.  In one cringeworthy scene, Sue recalls her husband allowing their young children to swim in the pool with Sandusky. "You couldn’t have known," she says, "or you wouldn’t have let them go in the pool with him."

But for all of the creative missteps of "Paterno," it's still worth watching. Pacino's acting is solid and the ensemble cast is uniformly strong. While you might get a bit of a headache trying to figure out the point of view of Barry Levinson, you'll still be saddened and a bit creeped out by Paterno and the university's willingness to ignore the signs of a hidden darkness in Jerry Sandusky's life. 

The fall of Paterno is a story filled with life lessons and it deserves a definitive telling. But until that comes along, "Paterno" is a perfectly workmanlike effort that comes off more as an average made-for-television movie than the potentially award-winning telefilm I suspect both Pacino and Levinson were hoping to make.

"Paterno" premieres Saturday, April 7th at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.