Paterno (2018)

The Worst Film Ever

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Joe Paterno coached at Penn State from 1966-2011 and was considered one of the most successful football coaches of all time and was affectionately known as JoPa. That all changed when Jerry Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator under Paerno's watch was accused of sexually abusing boys while at Penn State. During an FBI investigation it is found Paterno had concealed the allegations and delayed in reporting them to the appropriate authorities. The public is shocked and his family is dumbfounded as the Sandusky scandal unfolds and Paterno only wants to focus "on the game." The film accurately depicts how unconscionable it is that a man of this standing and influence could have allowed allegations of child sex abuse to be given so little attention. I can remember growing up and watching the college bowl games with my Dad and how much we looked forward to it. After watching this film I'm not sure if I'll every quite feel the same about "the game" again.

You get an all time great actor, Al Pacino to play long time coach Joe Paterno at the time the Jerry Sandusky molestation case broke, and what does HBO do? Nothing that measures up to their reputation. Pacino looks and sounds like Paterno, but then everything stops there. Pacino just goes around looking dazed and confused and gives no insight. There is really no insight given into the Paterno family, or the victims - not even the victim that is portrayed here, or the reporters cracking the case. The whole thing is just so superficial. There is nothing to take away from this other than universities often act like big corporations - asking "How can we protect ourselves here?" and firing anybody that answers that question, even someone lionized by the school for over 50 years. But in this cynical age that comes as no surprise. HBO, I've come to expect better from you.

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.

I was really looking forward to "Paterno," and boy was it a let down.Don't get me wrong: Al Pacino was amazing. He gave his performance a world-weary, old man perspective. And he definitely had the look and feel of the real Joe Paterno.But it seemed like the production really had to cut corners in order to pay Pacino's salary. The rest of the cast, with the exception of the actress who played Paterno's wife, was unimpressive. Not that they were necessarily bad actors. But it felt very soap opera-ish, "okay kids, learn these lines quickly 'cause we're on in five minutes." I had the feeling that the actors who played Paterno's family members and colleagues hadn't had much of a chance to meet or rehearse with Pacino before the cameras started rolling.The whole production had a high-school-film-project feel about it. Particularly the frequent flashbacks, which were all blurry, echo-y, quick, and pointless. The mobs of protestors looked and acted like a bunch of movie extras who were waving signs and chanting on cue, not a genuinely passionate and outraged mob. The script wasn't particularly memorable or dramatic.One of the worst parts was the terribly annoying background music. It was mostly a single synthesizer, played like a fifteen-year-old had just gotten it for Christmas and was eagerly showing off the "spooky" new chords he had learned. And it was incessant, snaking it's way through most of the show. It played over, and ruined, some of Pacino's most dramatic scenes. If you're a die hard Pacino fan, you should probably see this. For everyone else: "Paterno" isn't up to HBO's high quality standards.