Pinning down historic mistakes of others is old news in film-making. The new displaced biopic of legendary FBI honcho J. Edgar Hoover directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Dustin Lance Black (Oscar winner for Milk) does nothing different. It paints a man so deeply inflicted with a passion to eradicate “radicals” that his sense of justice becomes a mockery of power, personal prejudice and out of control obsession. At its personal best J. Edgar is about a flawed, stubborn man who’s given too much influence in the name of paranoia – at least from what we see of him here.

In one of the earliest scenes, a much younger J.Edgar – a near-perfect Leonardo DiCaprio without the over-burdened makeup he wears in 50 per cent of the film – fires one of his agents because of his insistence to wear a moustache and slightly flashy suits. In another, he shifts agent Pervis – the one responsible for killing mob-boss John Dillinger – to a desk job, because he was hotly handled at the justice department for his lack of personal involvement on the capture of the outlaws.

J. Edgar may have been a good bet on paper, especially the screenplay by Black, which intelligently – and at times sympathetically – dances around J. Edgar’s closeted sexual preference that’s kept in check by the cruel and solemn authority of his mother Annie (Judie Dench). Dench could very well be a close relative to Norman Bates mother, the way she’s portrayed.

Throughout the film one roots for Naomi Watts, who plays Helen Gandy, Edgar’s lifelong secretary. Watt’s sensitive, but limited screen exposure undermines a wonderful character that might have shone better than Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer). Tolson was the Associate Director of the FBI, whose lesser credentials gave him a lifelong stint in the department in front of more suitable candidates.

J. Edgar is told mostly in awkwardly, intermingled, flashbacks that add themselves without requisite. Eastwood who may have well be in the prime of his cinematic career, directs with his trademark minimalistic lighting and an almost non-existent background score, but what he fails to do is add a moving rhythm to what could have been a good motion picture. From what I saw, J. Edgar is very much like the man it seeks to describe: longwinded and distant. It’s not every day that a film can be saved by DiCaprio alone.