Paterno (2018)

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.

Awful film but only in what it portrays, time after time we hear of so many instances of what this film depicts. Children abused by those their parents trust, only to have an institutionalised cover up primarily then a sort of circling of the wagons to minimise damage to it. Church, school, social care, it sometimes feels like they were all set up to indulge paedophiles. When the story breaks even decent members of those institutions somehow feel compelled to deny the facts, it suddenly becomes a case of defending the establishment rather than the children placed in their care.

Again "HBO" does it with a beautiful and informative life like original movie as this latest called "Paterno" is hard hitting and revealing and very informative as it sheds light and exposes the cover up at Penn State when sexual abuse allegations became national news.However despite a montage and clips of footage of news about Jerry Sandusky the film is a focus on Joe Paterno(in another brilliant turn from Al Pacino) and how he and his family handle the scandal. As after many years of sexual abuse allegations are revealed against former assistant coach Sandusky, it shows Joe as a surprised yet conflicted and hurt man.The picture raises the question of moral obligation and it's a clear showcase of institutional failure as Paterno should have reported what he had known and not been so tight lipped. As it's clear the legacy of college football's all time wins coach has been badly damaged due to scandal and cover up. Also notable is Riley Keough as Sara Ganim who was the award winning reporter who helped break the scandal national. Overall good revealing film that's provocative and revealing and truth finding.

And before anyone attempts to call my review a "Penn St faithful" or "Aterno faithful" or anything like it... I'm a Buckeye. Lifelong, die hard Buckeye. So I owe nothing to the Nittany Lions. But I've got to be honest... this movie literally has nothing to do with Joe Pa. This movie should've been titled "Sandusky" and Pacino could have honestly been left out of this film entirely. Save a heavy hitter like him for a real movie about this man. They really wasted Pacino. And it was honestly a pretty ridiculous plot line. They attempted to pin Sandusky's cover up and scandal on Joe, but also attempting to paint him as basically senile or something. Like he seems completely out of it for anything at all besides football. So if that how you feel, then why are you trying to blame him for what Sandusky did? ESPECIALLY considering that the moment Joe heard about it he told the AD exactly what he knew? If Joe is so spaced out and such, why are you attempting to blame him and not the fully of sound mind AD???I don't get this film at all. It seems like they are just trying to capitalize on a big name and big scandal and not actually make a credible or even entertaining film.