Paterno

Cable TV is really hitting it out of the park these days. Paterno is one of the better movies I've seen in awhile including theatrical movies. I probably don't need to recap the entire plot for anyone, since the news covered it widely at the time. This film centers on the horrific Penn State scandal of sexual molestation of young boys by a man who was at one time on the Penn State coaching staff and was a "pillar of the community." What makes this different though than any news coverage you've seen is that it goes inside Joe Paterno 's life to show the downfall of a community and sports icon from the inside.

Of course, one must take into account that filmmakers take some license when it comes portraying Paterno and his family. While I'm sure they did their research, they weren't actually sitting at his dining room table for those intimate encounters with his kids during the aftermath of all of this. I think a question that most people had when they heard about the scandal was, "What was Joe Paterno thinking? Why did this powerful leader not do more? What was going on inside head?" This movie delves into that, giving an interesting and very possible take on what really was going on inside Paterno's head. Other great things about this movie: Riley Keough is fantastic as the reporter who originally breaks the case, and Al Pacino is so amazing as Paterno that you will forget you are even watching Pacino.

While its not another HBO masterpiece, I found it interesting enough to watch the whole thing and enjoyed it. I liked many things about it but I also didn't like some things, and I'll talk about that. At the beginning, it starts with the indictment so I was worried we wouldn't give enough background going back to 1998, but thankfully the film has many flashbacks and the reporters are also used as an explanation device of the past. The film did not shy away from the tough aspects of this tough subject. I did enjoy the Paterno scenes where he is confronted on the charges and how he deals with it, though it can be a little slow. I found the framing device to be interesting and Al Pacino's performance was great, I didn't see Al Pacino, I saw his character. The cinematography was also top notch, what can be expected from and HBO movie. But there were things I didn't like, and I will discuss it.

I personally didn't like how they opened it, they opened it in a spot where a lot of things already happened, but to be fair the film does go back and explains things. The pacing is also hit and miss, sometimes things are paced fine, and sometimes I felt it jumped around too quickly. I also wish is a bit longer or a show because there were a couple story points I feel could have been explored more and would have been beneficial to the story to delve into. I also didn't connect with any of the other characters except for Paterno, no character really stood out and wowed ne. All in all it was an interesting enough film that I finished and mostly enjoyed.

I thought the movie was going to be your typical made for TV movie and that's exactly what we got. Not good, not bad just somewhere in the middle. That being said this movie wasn't meant to be uplifting, it was meant to be dark and brooding because of the subject matter. This movie absolutely should have been about Paterno because he is the story here. The most powerful person in the state who could have stopped this long ago but was too worried about his sport, his university and his legacy to lift a finger. Paterno was made out to be a idiot in this movie because when the scandal broke that's exactly how he acted, the portrayal is spot on. He played the old man card in the most transparent way possible, blaming his memory and feeble mindedness when asked questions after it broke that he knew what was going on. I kept expecting to hear him say no habla ingles towards the end.

Far as I'm concerned he was portrayed accurately I could care less about his legacy and even the most loyal and diehard Nittany Lion fan should feel the same.

Barry Levinson's Paterno wants the viewer to know that this legendary college football coach, Penn State University and its football team supporters cared more about its football program than the fate of some of the young people sexualy abused by an assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky.

The film opaquely hints as to how much Paterno might had known as to the abuse taking place and like other people just turned a blind eye.

After a wonderful expansive opening where Paterno as head coach takes the team to a record breaking streak. This HBO film settles down as a Shakespearean tragedy, almost like a stage play.

Al Pacino's Paterno is a man out of his time. Confused, weak and sick. He is an octogenarian who knows all about college football but has no way to handle the mess he finds himself in.

The film contrasts Paterno's fate with that of local newspaper reporter Sara Ganim (Riley Keough) who doggedly pursued the story of the child abuse and who earned the trust of the families.

However the flip flopping between the two story strands feels like a distraction. Levinson's approach comes across as mild, even anodyne lacking the moral outrage of a movie like Spotlight.

People who hate this film or its implications that Paterno was complicit to the child abuse are wrong. He clearly was part of the narrative. He maybe never witnessed the abuse himself. But he never reported what happened when he heard about such incidents. I understand that plenty of people are sympathetic to Paterno even if they aren't Penn State or football fans. The film to me seems to clearly display Paterno as a figure who probably would have stayed obsessed with winning football games even if 99% of the people who care about him and football, didn't care about football. And he didn't do anything to deserve someone like Sandusky being hired. Paterno with luck could have never had such an incident and be revered today. And plenty of people revered today might have made the same mistakes as Paterno if they had to deal with Paterno's issues. That doesn't mean that Paterno and others had no responsibility to do the right thing and report Sandusky as soon as possible.

It's remarkable how quickly Paterno's fall happens after his 409th win. I forgot that he went from the winningest couch that almost everyone loved, to fired in less than week. I give this a 7 because the story wasn't that interesting, even though there seemed to be good execution.

I think what bothers people is that the real enemy of this film isn't so much Joe Paterno or Jerry Sandusky. Instead the main enemy is America's priority of putting football and other interests over our more basic human responsibility of protecting children and bringing likely sex abuse criminals to justice as quickly as possible.

After Paterno is fired and he addressed his supporters in front of his yard, be almost forgets about the victims in his address. He just throws in a call to support the victims at the very end. The victims should have been brought up initially or not at all. The error in this response really displayed his faulty priorities again.

The reactions of many of many reviewers is similar to the students protesting in the film following Peterno being fired. This story really highlights our power of denying the errors of people we grow to respect. OJ and Mafia defenders have similar blind spots. People say "Sure they made a mistake on this matter, but they weren't bad about everything. Who hasn't made a mistake?" As if the scope of the crime doesn't matter.

It's remarkably easy for some people to shield acknowledging that someone like Joe Paterno, who might be mostly good 99% of the time, can be complicit to a seriously crime the other 1% of the time. And that 1% was a 1% mattered a lot. Another common response is, "Paterno wants to be known as a legendary football coach. Not a football coach who also had to deal with child sex abuse by one of his couches." Well the media rather than the university addressing this issue from the start let Sandusky fester and abuse dozens more of decades.

I can't help but wonder how it ever felt ok for people to know someone was molesting children and not report them. If someone witnesses a murder, A) I don't think the witness would report the incident to their boss or couch. But B) if they did, they'd be sure law enforcement was in the loop too. Especially if the witness notices that the murderer walking around where he committed his crime years later. Child molesters are extremely likely to repeat their crimes. Much more so than almost any other type of criminal. This is something people should know and care about. It seems that a lot of people are unprepared to deal with such an incident and think it'd never happen to them or someone they know. This film gets a 7 largely for bringing this issue more-so into the spotlight.

Based on the perceptions of other reviewers I get the feeling that people don't want other films based on true stories like Paterno, or Spotlight. They don't want to think about the faults of people who seemed mostly fine. My response: Put an end to such incidents happening, and more importantly festering, and there will be no extraordinarily awful true story to make a movie about down the line about our supposed heroes. Instead we can just have real heroes. The fact that, for now, such things still happen, only reinforces the need to make movies like Paterno.

Until we go decades with nothing like this happening, I'll find it relevant to be aware of stories like Paterno. In the last year or two we learned of a similar case of child abuse with the US gymnastics team. Maybe someday we'll learn.