Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Larry Flynt is the hedonistically obnoxious, but indomitable, publisher of Hustler magazine. The film recounts his struggle to make an honest living publishing his girlie magazine and how it changes into a battle to protect the freedom of speech for all people.
Milos Forman's biopic benefits enormously from Woody Harrelson's barnstorming lead performance and a genuinely compelling Edward Norton as Larry Flynt's lawyer Alan Isaacman. The film makes a persuasive, intellectually honest case for First Amendment absolutism through an unlikely and provocative subject. The plotting is episodic and conventional for a biopic — birth, rise, controversy, fall, redemption — without much structural innovation, and the cinematography is competent but unremarkable. Novelty is moderate: the subject matter is genuinely transgressive and the framing of Flynt as a free-speech hero is boldly counterintuitive, but the biopic scaffolding is familiar. The ending, built around the Supreme Court victory over Jerry Falwell, lands with satisfying thematic weight even if it's tidily resolved.