Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »
Former L.A.-based film critic Rod Lurie knows how to write about films, but he needs to learn how to write one. Indeed, he's actually a better director than he is a script writer. His pet project, last year's "The Contender," fails because its elements split it in half. The at-times brilliant acting and smooth, professional direction are failed by a clunky screenplay that doesn't play fair with its characters on political, narrative, and humanist levels.
In "The Contender," President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) appoints Senator Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) to the Vice-Presidency after the former Vice President dies in an accident. Republican Congressman Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman) has a problem with the nomination, so he energetically goes for Hanson's throat during the confirmation hearings. There is a sub-plot involving Virginia Governor Jack Hathaway, but while it is supposed to show how Democrats can "play fair and just" when it comes to their own, it also provides a cheap and easy way for the boys of the Donkey Party to sink Runyon.
You've probably heard about the hoopla surrounding the film's sexual content. It's nothing more than a convenient excuse for Laine Hanson to act all heroic and martyr-like. The whole film depends mostly on her unwillingness to say anything about allegations concerning her past sexual relations and activities.
Lurie wrote a few good soundbites (mostly for leading lady Allen, since he wrote the movie with her winning an Oscar in mind): "I'm guilty but not responsible" (a bad pun on the contemporary German expression "responsible but not guilty" that describes the attitudes of today's Germans towards the Holocaust) and "principles only mean something if you stick by them when they're inconvenient." However, that's the journalist in Lurie shining through, not a craftsman.
It is understandable why executive producer Oldman wound up loudly disavowing the film in the press. Republicans are played as villains solely for the reason that they are Republicans, not because of what they do, say, or believe. Here is a partisan film that plays fast and dirty, and it's hard to take seriously the leftist, liberal stance of Lurie when he doesn't want to depict politics realistically.
The film ultimately cops out of the steadfastedness that it has been pushing on its audience. Throughout the film, Laine Hanson refuses to answer any questions concerning her private life. Fine. However, near the end of the film, President Evans asks Hanson for the full details, and Hanson's reply negates the credibility of the film for two reasons. The first reason is that Hanson breaks that vow of silence she made concerning the allegations. The second reason is that the "heroic martyr" role is patently absurd. In this day and age, we do not expect our leaders to make sacrifices of the scale on display, but we expect truths, especially when an individual has nothing from which to hide. I'll just leave it at that.
Joan Allen, so good in so many movies, sold out by acting in this movie. She is again extremely competent, but I was saddened to see someone cheapen her craft to material that panders to our worst sense about our political system. Likewise, Gary Oldman gives a memorable performance as the reptilian Runyon, but why did such an intelligent actor willingly subject himself to a script that portrays his character so one-dimensionally?
The one creation in the film that avoids criticism is President Jackson Evans. The script renders the president as a brilliant, good man, even when he is in the midst of plotting a political ruse. As expected of a film of this nature, much speechifying occurs in "The Contender." Most of these speeches sound like people grandstanding or airing a laundry list of their policy positions. However, the president gets to deliver the one address comprised of genuine conviction. (Indeed, the movie is lucky that this is the speech that concludes the film, and it does much to rehabilitate the film's stature in viewers' memories.) It is also the one moment where, you if listen carefully, Lurie's Democratic heavy-handedness doesn't get in his way. The speech is a great example of a politician using the political climate to his Machiavellian advantage, for it pulls at the right emotional strings if you happen to be listening to him with your heart and not your mind.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]6350[/release]