Dennis Quaid’s charismatic chameleon like performance is the lone highlight in Reagan, a biopic that fails to deliver an epic cinematic retelling of the life and legacy of President Ronald Reagan.

Try as they might, the conservative film space is struggling to deliver a movie that can capture the mainstream. It comes down to a lack of resources and imagination, two vital factors that Reagan is starved for.

Even though Reagan is headlined by an authentic movie star in Dennis Quaid who delivers one of his best performances, Reagan fails to engage with its paint-by-numbers filmmaking from director Sean McNamara (On a Wing and a Prayer) and head-over-heels fawning for its subject, resulting in a film that is more interested in propping Ronald Reagan the conservative legend then telling an engrossing story about Reagan the man.

Based on the book “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism”, Reagan is told through the perspective of (fictional) former KGB agent Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight) who in post-USSR Russia regals the triumphs of “The Crusader” Reagan to agent Andrei Novikov (Alex Sparrow). Narration in a feature film is often used as a lazy tool for exposition. What makes it worse in Reagan is that it is distracting and narratively confusing as to why a Russian voice is so prominent in a quintessentially American story.

McNamara presents Reagan’s life from his childhood in Illinois, his conversion to Christianity as a young man, the ups and downs of his Hollywood years, and his political career. Capturing 70 years of one man’s life in a feature film is a hard task for any filmmaker. McNamara’s attempt to do so with Reagan is presented as a package of Reagan’s most iconic moments as opposed to a film experience that flows and engages. Reportedly the first cut for Reagan was almost three-and-a-half hours long. It would have been interesting to see if more time would have made a difference.

Portraying Reagan through most of the film is Dennis Quaid, who in cadence and demeanour certainly delivers a strong turn as “the Gipper”. This includes those younger years where the films’ VFX artists try their best to de-age a very aged cast, which counts conservative actor stalwarts Jon Voight, Robert Davi, Kevin Sorbo, and Nick Searcy among them. In the end it is only Penelope Ann Miller who delivers anything close to Quaid’s level.

It is McNamara’s refusal to acknowledge the limited production budget for Reagan that is, ultimately, the film’s undoing, with his failed attempt to stretch a $25 million budget into a $100 million looking film resulting in a $2.50 bargain-basement-quality release. Needed was more imagination, more creativity, in telling Reagan’s story without feeling like a cheap knock-off of other political biopics, which is what Reagan proves to be.