[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Based on Paul Kengor’s outstanding 2006 biography The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, the Ronald Reagan biopic that Reagan fans have been waiting to see finally came to the big screen this last weekend.

Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid and directed by Sean McNamara, actually began filming in 2020, was derailed by the COVID pandemic, and then struggled to find a distributor before hitting theaters four years later.

The film hits many – almost too many – of the most notable highlights of Reagan’s life and political achievements: saving lives as a teenage lifeguard, becoming a leading man in Tinseltown, combatting Communist thugs in Hollywood unions, running for President (including the televised debate during which Reagan delivered the ad lib that sank Jimmy Carter’s election chances: “There you go again”), the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet “evil empire,” and more. The climactic sequence of the film is Reagan’s epic showdown with the Soviet Union and his delivery of the “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech which proved to be the symbolic coup de grace against the USSR.

The movie also presents some notable setbacks such as his failed marriage to ambitious actress Jane Wyman, the Iran-Contra scandal, the outcry over his handling of the AIDS crisis, the assassination attempt which very nearly killed him (including the moment Reagan, with typical good humor, told his doctors, “Please tell me you’re Republicans”), and of course, the heart-wrenching onset of Alzheimer’s. But primarily, the film makes the through-line of the story Ronnie’s unshakeable self-confidence, which led him to trust in what he believed to be his God-given mission to end Communism (for which the Russians referred to him as The Crusader) – often to the consternation and exasperation of his political advisers.

Cradle-to-grave biopics notoriously tend to be less successfully-told stories than ones that zero in on a slice of the subject’s life which really captures the essence of the person. The Wall Street Journal’s Kyle Smith has a valid point when he notes that Reagan deserves a more “rigorous, in-depth portrayal” than McNamara’s sprawling canvas, and perhaps it does – by all means, let’s have more Reagan movies – but I think this film successfully weaves together the episodes of Reagan’s life and presidency with an interesting framing device: actor Jon Voight playing an aging Communist apparatchik explaining Reagan’s story and significance to a younger KGB agent.

This framing seems to be a stumbling block for many movie critics, but Reagan nevertheless will resonate with millions of viewers who want to see exactly this kind of biopic – one that honors a good man and his historic achievements in a story delivered without a political sucker punch.

There have been noteworthy portrayals of Ronald Reagan on film before (for example, Richard Crenna in Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Day Reagan Was Shot), but Dennis Quaid inhabits the role like no one else. Not settling for mere imitation, he embodies Reagan’s rugged physicality and captures his sense of humor, the cadence of his voice, even the set of his jaw and – forgive my sentimentality – the mischievous twinkle in his eye. Quaid brings a sincerity and respectful commitment to every scene, especially considering that delivering a sympathetic portrayal of Reagan is not going to endear him to his Hollywood peers or earn him an Oscar nomination.

A lifelong registered independent, Quaid has said Reagan is his favorite president. He complains about political correctness and remembers a time when political opponents could wrangle all day but have a beer together in the evening. But unlike many other celebrities, Quaid doesn’t feel inclined to spout off with a media megaphone:

Who cares what an actor thinks? I’ll leave politics to the people who have a month of cushion before things go wrong. I lead a privileged life, so I shouldn’t be speaking for them. Actors think, “Oh boy, I’m famous. People want to talk to me. I must know a lot of stuff.” So they get vocal. But they know so much that isn’t true.

Kudos also to Penelope Ann Wilson’s turn as Reagan’s true love Nancy. The media always depicted her as icy and unapproachable, but Wilson portrays Nancy as fiercely and passionately devoted to Ronnie, as she was in real life. The palpable chemistry between Quaid and Wilson truly honors what Wilson herself called Ronnie and Nancy’s Rocky-like romance.

There is a huge number of supporting characters, among them familiar conservative faces such as Voight, Robert Davi, Kevin Sorbo, even Pat Boone. Honorable mentions among the cast: a still-gorgeous-at-66 Lesley Anne-Down as Margaret Thatcher; Dan Lauria, who brings to life Tip O’Neill, Reagan’s adversarial fellow Irishman; and Olek Krupa, who is as much Mikhail Gorbachev as Quaid is Reagan.

I’m shocked, shocked that entertainment critics, all but a tiny percentage of whom are rabidly Left-wing (change my mind), hate the film. Slant Magazine sums up the complaint most often voiced in reviews: “Sean McNamara’s biopic Reagan moves well beyond hero worship, as it paints the 40th U.S. president as a saint among men.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s Kyle Smith dismissed it as “hagiographical.”

To some extent that is a fair criticism, but guess what? I don’t care. In mainstream Hollywood’s wretched hands, a Reagan biopic would have been a petty, meanspirited takedown of a conservative icon. I and tens of millions of fellow conservatives have no interest in watching Hollywood perversely trash another American hero. Unlike today’s self-righteous Hollywood elites, we want to see America win for once.

No one is more propagandistic than a Hollywood leftie. They do not hesitate to fabricate sympathetic – even heroic – depictions of Left-wing monsters like murdering Communist Ché Guevara. Give conservatives a break for wanting to see a true American hero honored and remembered the way he should be. And even if it is unapologetically hagiographical, Reagan is also unapologetically anti-Communist, something mainstream Hollywood shamefully would never get behind.

Those critics who don’t trash it will ignore it, as the Left is always wont to do with entertainment that dares to serve conservative audiences respectfully. That’s fine – unlike progressives, conservative audiences take critics’ thumbs-down as a positive recommendation. On the Rotten Tomatoes review site, Reagan has earned an abysmal 19% favorability rating from critics as of this writing – you’d think this was the worst movie ever made – but revealingly, it earned an audience favorability score of 98%. Which number matters more?

Go see it in the theater, then own it on DVD and pass it down to your kids or grandkids, because as progressives understand all too well, today’s entertainment is largely how history is going to be remembered and perceived by future generations. For better or worse, many more people over the years will see this film than will read the excellent book on which it is based. Reagan is satisfying filmmaking we should be supporting as conservatives who care about preserving a more truthful alternative to Left-wing narratives.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior