Reagan is Dennis Quaid’s third faith-based biopic directed by Sean McNamara. In the first he portrayed the father of a teenage girl who returns to the water after a devastating shark attack. Last year he starred as a pharmacist who safely landed a plane after the pilot died. These biopic’s respective titles, Soul Surfer and On a Wing and a Prayer, hint at the lack of subtlety McNamara employed in each film, and Reagan is similarly heavy-handed. Presenting the 40th US President as a strong-willed Christian who engineers the defeat of an Evil Empire, it comes as little surprise to learn that the screenplay was based on a Reagan biography titled ‘The Crusader’.

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​The signs are there from the outset, with Reagan bizarrely describing the attempt on his life as “all part of the divine plan.” After a credit sequence that looks like the product of a propagandist’s wet dream, we finally land in present day Russia where an unconvincing Jon Voight explains the cause of the Soviet Union’s decline. Assigned the task of monitoring Reagan from his earliest days in Hollywood, the retired spy lays out a rose-coloured version of the actor-cum-politician’s life. Be it reading Bible verses in church, working as a lifeguard, fighting Communist infiltration of the film industry or eventually winning the Cold War, Voight’s commentary of his old adversary’s life is remarkably complimentary. Any acknowledgment of Reagan’s shortcomings, including the Iran-Contra Affair, trickle-down economics and lack of action on AIDS, are either scoffed at in disbelief or confined to a short music video.

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More hagiopic than biopic, Reagan chooses breadth over depth, reducing the film to little more than a highlight reel of ‘The Great Man Speaks’. In these scenes, Quaid proves himself a capable mimic, though at times his lips appear to have needed Mr. Ed’s peanut-butter to help them move on cue. Not that he is done any favours by the film’s substandard de-aging effects. Yet whenever his cheeks appear more ruddy than plastic, Quaid manages to suggest the charm that causes Gorbachev to confess that Reagan could pick your pocket and make you feel good about it.

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If you seek a history lesson, watch a documentary. If you’re after a more nuanced depiction of one of the 20th Century's most consequential figures, may we suggest The Reagans. However, if you prefer old-fashioned biopics that sanctify their subjects, then Reagan is the movie for you.