THE COMEY RULE is a 4 part showtime adaptation of Jim Comey's book A Higher Loyalty, which seeks to explain the decisions he made in opening up an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton 8 days before the 2016 election.
It stars Jeff Daniels as James Comey, Holly Hunter as Attorney General Sally Yates, Scoot McNairy as Rod Rosenstein, Breaking Bad's Jonathan Banks as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Brendan Gleeson as President Donald Trump.
The US critics have not been kind - is it worth watching?
Yes
But
If you enjoy watching Shakespearean historical disaster stories covering recent history, such as PEOPLE VS OJ SIMPSON or CHERNOBYL, you might enjoy this, though like them, it may leave you sick to the stomach.
It is a familiar story of naive politicos living in a fantasy WEST WING dreamland of dreams, rainbows and civic duty. They fuss earnestly about hard political rules and morals which turn out to be only held in place by polite behavior and wishful thinking. Their attempts to contain cynical win-at-all-costs political partisans, apparently from an adjacent Joaquin Pheonix's JOKER type reality, provide most of the humour/tragedy depending on your political persuasion.
see also
and others
I guess it's the story of our time
THE COMEY RULE is competently done, and gripping in places though it does seem to lean on NEWSROOM level earnestness (full disclosure, I mainly I loved that show). Jeff Daniel's take on Comey is trying to be earnest and dutiful, but comes across as hapless and naive.
Scoot McNairy as Rosenstien is better, playing Judas to Comey's fumbling Burea-Christ.
Brendan Gleeson's Trump is excellent, perhaps the best serious onscreen portrayal so far. There must be a temptation to play Trump as a clown (based only on a mountain of real evidence in our own current reality) Gleeson steps back from the joke and get's all of Trump's power of personality and his predatory charisma.
The most effective sequence is the end of Ep2, in the run up to election night Nov 2016. The creeping sense of dread will be familiar to anyone invested in politics at the time, even foreign rubberneckers foolishly hoping to see a replay of 2012. It is not just the inevitability which is sickening, it is also the idiot complacency of the establishment which is so sure of the result.
So sure of the result Supreme Court decisions are delayed until Hillary is president. So sure of the result that the integrity of the FBI is more important to Comey than stopping a Russian asset running for president. When historians teach the history of Cold War II, I'm sure the professional credibility of Comey's team will balance nicely against Russia's 21st century geopolitical triumph over the former world super power. The soft focus Authurian treament given to the round table used by Comey's team maybe the only amusement you'll get in these four hours.
Omissions from THE COMEY RULE are interesting. It can't escape the anti-Republican slant of the movies listed about but fails to mention that virtually all of the real the FBI people depicted where in fact Republican voters themselves, just trying to do their duty.
It doesn't touch on Russian interference in the earlier Brexit vote which should have been a red flag for the FBI. It doesn't explain the importance awarded to Hillary's private server when previously Colin Powell in the Bush Administration made the same lapses. It doesn't explain why Comey chose to re-open the Clinton investigation (which is shown as an inescapable decision) but not to publicise the Russian interference before the election, which was known at the time and blocked by... wait for it... Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.
One useful thing it does remind us of is the Russian hack into the Republican Party campaign server. The Russian influence on the 2016 election is usually described as the attack on the Democratic Party campaign server, with the results later published by wikileaks. Wikileak's exact timing of the release of private Democratic emails drew attention away from Trump's "Grab em by the pussy!" bus video which hit the news a few hours before.
The hidden story is the other successful Russian hack on the Republican campaign server, from which no details have ever been leaked, publicly at least. The Russian investigation story which follows after the Comey Rule is the similarly constrained and compromised Robert Mueller probe, which actually did lead all the way to the successful impeachment of Trump. The only thing that prevented Trump's removal from office in Mueller's Russia investigation was the narrow vote in the *Republican* controlled Senate. On Russia, Trump has enjoyed rock solid support from Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, et al, all of whom became Trump supporters subsequent to the Russian hacks on the Republican server.
The almost rabid need for the Trump Republicans to stay in power whatever the cost to their party, their country and their planet takes some explaining. The Comey Rule dodges that completely, to concentrate once again on diabolical Hillary and HER EMAILS. The story of Russian hack on the Republican Party server has not yet been dramatised, because we don't know the end, because we are still living through it.
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