Hollywood can’t always be trusted to accurately portray reality or history, to say the least. But I fully enjoyed watching the facts go by in the premier of “Reagan,” which I saw this week at the famous Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. “Reagan,” which stars Dennis Quaid as my father and opened around the country Friday, covers my father’s career from Illinois lifeguard to the American president who set out to bankrupt the Soviet Union – and did it. It took an international team of freedom fighters like Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to bring down the USSR and end the Cold War. But as the movie shows, it was my father’s rhetoric, his America-wins foreign policy, his Christian moral principles and his stubborn negotiating skills that led the way to the West’s victory over the Evil Empire.
“Reagan” is also running surprisingly strong at the box office, having grossed close to $20 million. Since it came out Aug. 30, it has ranked among the top five movies out there, which include “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the latest in the Marvel superhero franchise. … [N]o one can doubt how Reagan today might regard Vladimir Putin, whose central ambition is to re-create the Russian empire. He would see Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a clear step toward doing so.