'J. Edgar'  Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a sexually ambiguous and
unstable J. Edgar Hoover in the new Clint Eastwood film, "J.
Edgar," now playing at area theaters. (Courtesy of Warner Bros.
/ November 14, 2011)  The late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
would have hated director Clint Eastwood's new movie about him,
but audiences are likely to be intrigued by it. Although "J.
Edgar" does not realize its full dramatic potential, it's an
ambitious attempt to get inside the mind of a man for whom
secrecy was a professional attribute.  During his long career,
Eastwood's strength as a director has been his adherence to
straightforward, deliberately paced storytelling that encourages
actors to develop their characters in an incremental fashion.
Ironically, "J. Edgar" would have been an even better film if it
adhered more rigorously to Eastwood's usual working method.
Instead, the time-skipping narrative structure in the screenplay
by Dustin Lance Black ("Milk") constantly jumps back and forth
between Hoover as an idea