In the hours following news of Rob Reiner’s death at the age of 78 on December 14, my social media feeds were filled with screenshots, sourced from IMDb and Wikipedia, of the director’s impressive run of films from the 1980s to the mid-1990s — a nearly unbroken line of certifiable classics. I also saw a lot of recognition for Reiner’s support of progressive causes, a lifelong project that may have started with his acting work on the landmark sitcom. All in familythe series that made Reiner a star in the 1970s. It has been heartening to see these many respectful tributes not only to Reiner’s good deeds in the area of social justice, but also to his film work, which has perhaps not always been properly appreciated for its breadth and vitality.
Unlike many renowned directors working today, Reiner did not have a distinctive style. He didn’t have a recognizable visual and aural cadence like Christopher Nolan. He didn’t have the sensitive color palette of an indie Sofia Coppola, nor the idiosyncratic vernacular of so many indie authors. He resolutely belonged to an older and more general tradition. At the height of his directing career, Reiner was part of a now-vanishing class of celebrated and beloved journeyman directors, itinerant creators whose primary goal was to make broadly appealing pictures that were intelligent and elevated enough to merit our attention.
These days, few directors seem interested in such a zigzagging trajectory as Reiner, who has worked in mockumentary, teen comedy, adult romantic comedy, coming-of-age adventure, horror, courtroom drama, fantasy and more throughout his storied and, until very recently, perhaps underappreciated career. Reiner may have struggled to achieve that same consistency in his later years, but he leaves behind a legacy that is difficult to pin down and all the more admirable.
I was born in the midst of Reiner’s ascendancy as a director and so, as my cinematic consciousness was born and developed, Reiner simply existed in my mind as a fundamental part of the setting. I knew he wasn’t regarded with as much deference as, say, Steven Spielberg, but I also knew that seeing Reiner’s name in a trailer tended to confirm a certain kind of importance, of quality. However, I don’t know if I always knew that a film I watched was shaped by his hand.
On first viewing, When Harry met Sally… (1989) seem to have come out of nowhere. I was curious about the actors and the woman who wrote it and who my mother adored. But I didn’t think much about the direction. Not because there is nothing to enjoy – there is in abundance. But Reiner wasn’t flashy with his style. He made beautiful images, kept things moving at an engaging trot, then strayed from the film’s marquee talent. For all its beautiful aesthetic – oh, how the seasons pass When Harry met Sally…! — the film is constructed modestly, without fuss or excess.
The same could be said of his two Aaron Sorkin films, the gritty, old-fashioned legal drama Some good men (1992) and the Vanishing White House Fairy Tale The American President (1995). Their perfectly curated casts and crisp visuals all work primarily in service of Sorkin’s dense but nimble scripts; Reiner simply builds an elegant structure to house these words, then lets things unfold smoothly. One does not feel a sense of directorial ego while watching these films, only the satisfaction of a high-quality product performing exactly, perhaps even better, than advertised.
This kind of skill has often been looked down upon as too purely commercial, empty and lacking in personal vision. But in 2025, when there is such a wide gap between a handful of revered arthouse artists and the relatively anonymous directors of everything else, Reiner’s deft marriage of the prestige and the populist seems like a wonderful, almost lost art.
This is not to damn him with faint praise. Of course, Reiner gave his films a specific personality. The Princess Bride (1987) is bristling and alive with both the director’s particular comic rhythms and his disarming sentimentality. There is an ironic and sardonic Reinerian sensibility in all his best works, even within the cramped and frightening confines of Misery (1990). What unites all of his great films is the sense that Reiner only wanted to be the best possible manager of the material and the people he admired. It seems the people he worked with admired him in return.
Eventually, Reiner lost his Midas touch, as happens with many top filmmakers, as their success and age distanced them from the molten center of the culture. But Reiner had a spectacular run in his prime, helping to define a Hollywood era without ever really addressing his own contributions to that iconography. Reiner was simply a Hollywood native, a man born there who went on to be deeply devoted to his craft, to its economy, and to moral responsibility.
He was at the forefront of a generation of filmmakers and producers who, perhaps, with more or less arrogance (I think in Reiner’s case it was very little), saw themselves as torchbearers, taking up the standard held out to them by the lions of past golden eras. They couldn’t see the world they and all of us were marching toward, a time in which attention would become increasingly difficult to capture.
And yet, as distracted and atomized as people are these days, the fact that his films are the ones that audiences still return to and discover, decade after decade, speaks volumes about Reiner’s special artistry. Reiner was not only a capable businessman, as it was perhaps too easy to categorize him. He also created authentic and lasting magic.
