While the filmmakers behind Showtime’s two-part “The Comey Rule” have clearly overestimated the public’s desire for— uhhh, gestures in the general direction of anything and everything in entertainment vaguely resembling the Trump Shitshow, any ancillary offshoots (see the Fox News portrait “The Loudest Voice”) and generally, politics in the corrosive age of toxic politics— writer/director Bill Ray’s “The Comey Rule” does open up with a good, if simplistic, bit and intriguing question. Featuring footage from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the basic, easy to digest posit for audiences is thus: is James Comey a “good” guy or a “bad” guy?
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After all, this is the former FBI Director who helped sink Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election by publicly revealing the FBI had re-opened her notorious email scandal some 11 days before the election (bad), while keeping Trump’s pre-election dealings with the Russians, which the FBI was fully aware of, private and secretive from the American people (worse), but then was fired by President Trump for so-called disloyalty and refusing to “lift the Russia cloud” off Trump by telling the American people that the FBI wasn’t investigating the President (good). Trump sacks underlings he’s previously praised as “the best” like he puts on bronzer— it’s a daily occurrence— but no other firing in the Trump administration was as shocking or explosive, nor triggered as many chain of events as Comey’s dismissal and it paved the way for the Mueller Report, impeachment and an incredibly chaotic four years in the White House.
[Editor’s note: I gotta stop you right here: if you somehow didn’t pay attention to politics in the run-up to the 2016 election, the firing of James Comey, or much of the Trump 2016-2020 disaster, you should stop now, read no further, and probably not watch this show because you will be lost. It’s just not meant for you]
Based on Comey’s own memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” from the outside, it’s not hard to guess which direction the loyalties and biases of the series swing. That said, “The Comey Rule,” is—at least in Part One—a very engrossing, impartial, and intriguing FBI procedural in the vein of Scott Z. Burns’ unshowy and underrated political thriller “The Report” starring Adam Driver. And in a show of monster movie-like restraint and discipline, Trump doesn’t even appear in that initial chapter.
“Jim was always a showboat,” then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (a perfectly feeble and ineffectual Scoot McNairy) says early on, his appearances in the series something of a negative-on-Comey framing device throughout. “You need a lot of attention?” then-President Barack Obama (Kingsley Ben-Adir) asks Comey in late 2012 while interviewing him for the position of FBI Director. And the show, early on, largely pains itself to paint a portrait of Comey as being seen by nearly everyone, as a self-righteous, prideful, morally superior person driven by ego. This surprise suggestion is halting enough to make you question everything you think you know about Comey’s story and ‘A Higher Loyalty,’ and or, at least the filmmaker’s motivations.
Ray (known for “Shattered Glass,” and “Captain Phillips”) frames Comey as a lofty do-gooder, a self-satisfied Boy Scout, teacher’s pet, and someone who loves the sound of his monologuing voice (which makes Jeff Daniels perfect casting given how prone he is to play these kinds of sanctimonious characters). And then it rolls up its sleeves and gets to work.
While the series time hops, it mostly focuses on, in Part One—the far superior chapter— on the run-up to the 2016 election, centering on summer 2015 when Hillary Clinton’s email scandal dominated the hyperventilating news media cycle. It’s not optimal for the FBI, who want to stay out of politics, but 16 months before the election the law enforcement organization is compelled to look into Clinton’s email scandal.
Like “The Report,” this is immersive, juicy, intriguing stuff for people that dig process and procedurals that move at a fast clip and chock-a-block dense with information and twists, turns, and unforeseen consequences as more stones are overturned. Comey’s “Mid-Year Exam” team (MYE team) —the name of the FBI group who worked on the Clinton investigation—is a who’s who of terrific character actors being singularly terrific: Michael Kelly as Andrew McCabe, Oona Chaplin as Lisa Page, Amy Seimetz as Trisha Anderson, Steven Pasquale as Peter Strzok, and so forth, plus Brian d’Arcy James as then-Deputy FBI Director Mark Giuliano who soon departs for real money in the private sector.
This crack outfit dissects, pour overs, and interrogates all the evidence in the Clinton email hack—the series occasionally pivoting away to CNN and various cable channels to illustrate the context of where the Trump campaign is at the same time, effectively conveying the portentous anxiety many felt as Trump came closer to clinching the Republican nomination and then winning the election. The MYE is aghast at this prospect, but consummate professionals. Aside from the intricacies of the MYE and the various troublesome intel they discover—details about Russian interference, ghoulishly worrisome information about Trump campaign Russian collusion they feel they can’t go public with without upending the election more than they already have— “The Comey Rule” Part One is essentially about the mistakes Comey made, but also the incredibly difficult choices he faced. Comey’s faults are depicted as overconfidence bordering on arrogance, naïve faith in the truth and the rule of law, and his lack of political shrewdness. While the FBI doesn’t go public with Trump collusion, they feel like they are morally obligated to tell Congress about the re-opening of the Clinton campaign investigation because last-minute evidence surfaces and they already told the Congress and the American people that the investigation was closed—and it’s these difficult moral and political decisions and investigative qualities that make chapter one captivating.
Part Two is another story, however, and things begin to falter there, not because Brendan Gleeson fails in his portrayal of narcissistic blowhard Donald J. Trump—it’s largely good but inherently ridiculous by nature— but because its allegiance towards Comey begins to reveal itself and the series veers towards the predictable liberal confirmation bias property you assumed it was, to begin with. It’s shamefully obvious that Trump is a corrupt, out of his depth windbag who willfully flouts the safeguarding checks and balances of democracy. But that’s nothing new, nor surprising, so there’s little appeal in Gleeson’s repellant performance other than his first or second time in using “YUGE.”
The rest goes down as you expect—Michael Flynn engaging the Russians and the scandal that ensues, the infamous asking-for-loyalty one-on-one dinner, the memorializing in memos, the laughably shocking ineptness of the White House that surrounds him—but none of it has the behind-the-scenes maneuvering really captivates or sparks like part one. It’s difficult to not to turn Trump into a caricature—the spray tan, the ridiculous hair, the third-grade-level speech, the tacky suits—and Gleeson is admirable but as best they try, Trump still appears like an odiously punchable cartoon (which he is, but it skews tilts your drama).
Some of the casting is phenomenally good (Jonathan Banks as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a deliciously oily William Sadler as Michael Flynn, Holly Hunter as former Attorney General) other bits, not so much (Joe Lo Truglio as then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, lol, no).
Ultimately, and rather uninterestingly, “The Comey Rule” becomes hagiographic and enamored with Comey’s self-made myth of duty and loyalty above all and the self-serving notion that if mistakes were made, they were made in the name of higher truths. Sure, the President is unethical, ego-driven, transactional in nature, and consumed with the mob-like notion of personal loyalty. And yes, it seems like James Comey, for better or worse, is a man of high, if blind, integrity. But no amount of grandiloquent grandstanding and melancholic bugle-horn patriotism while Comey stares off into the distance contemplating his decisions—and perhaps his self-satisfied belief he did the right thing in the name of country— can convince you the last act hasn’t just bent the knee in devotion to its subject and thus, not all that special any longer. And t’s disappointing, especially given how things begin. So, James Comey, good guy? Bill Ray says two resounding thumbs up with nationalistic trumpet blares in the background for good measure. But even “The Comey Rule” suggests Comey believed his own ethics and the integrity of the FBI were worth more than the norms and policies that always mattered to this nation. You tell me what good that brought any of us. [C+]
“The Comey Rule” debuts on Showtime on September 27.
