‘Reagan’ Review: Dennis Quaid’s Time-Hopping Cold War Drama

In his long career, Dennis Quaid has sometimes played politicians. He’s been former President Bill Clinton (“The Special Relationship”) and was the president in the musical comedy “American Dreamz” with Hugh Grant and Willem Dafoe. Now, in “Reagan,” Quaid portrays former President Ronald Reagan with, if not brilliance, at least evident conviction. Time truly holds surprises for all of us.

The movie, directed by Sean McNamara from a screenplay by Howard Klausner, opens with Quaid as the 40th president leaving a speech site and walking right into an assassination attempt. The picture then moves to present-day Moscow. Jon Voight plays Viktor Petrovich, a retired K.G.B. agent with an accent straight out of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” who narrates the story of Reagan to a younger functionary. And so we shift back to the 1980s, and then back to Reagan’s early years in radio and Hollywood. (Mena Suvari plays Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, and Penelope Ann Miller is Nancy.)

In the first eight minutes, the movie makes as many temporal shifts as a 1960s Alain Resnais work, albeit quite less gracefully.

Why is Reagan’s story relayed by a K.G.B. guy? Because in this unabashed love letter to the former president, Reagan was the force behind the fall of the Soviet Union. The movie implies that this “evil empire” collapsed as a result not just of his presidency, but of his anti-Communist activism during his entertainment career in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. These eras are depicted in scenes strongly suggesting that before shooting, the cinematographer, Christian Sebaldt, happened upon a fire sale on diffusion filters at the camera store.

The cast is dotted with cameos from the actors Lesley-Anne Down and Kevin Dillon; the prominent Hollywood conservatives Kevin Sorbo and Robert Davi also appear as seals of approval, one infers. It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.

Reagan
Not rated. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. In theaters.