Silver City

John Sayles repeats himself in "Silver City," borrowing very heavy-handedly from his much more effective takes on local politics and the environment that spawns it, from his "City of Hope" (urban NJ), "Lone Star" (Texas)--which also featured Kris Kristofferson in a not dissimilar role-- and "Sunshine State" (Florida), though now he's taking on Colorado.

Other actors also seem to be present for their resonance from other features, Michael Murphy from "Tanner 88," Daryl Hannah almost as crazy as she was in "Kill Bill, Volume 2," and Richard Dreyfuss channeling Duddy Kravitz as a campaign manager.

While Chris Cooper is very effective in capturing a George W. Bush-type politician from a family dynasty, Danny Huston switches confusingly from cynical ex-journalist/investigator to naif as he uncovers a scandal with ever-widening yet encircling entanglements of class, ethnicity, media, real estate, wildlife, etc. etc.

While the satire is scarily amusing, the final scene of this overlong film is literally overkill.

Sayles as usual carefully picks the songs on the soundtrack, here there's frequent Cowboy Junkies tracks.

Pretty scary film, with its only slightly veiled alignment with Bush's environmental and immigration policies(contradiction in terms to be sure!), this uneven and fragmented film missed the mark in great film-making but hit it somewhat in its frightening depiction of the real power behind the powers that appear to be in charge in today's politics.

Cris Cooper's character's dysfunction with the English language was so very similar to Bush's and really appeared pathetic in a man running for governor, but to his credit he didn't say "nucular" one time but did have that same unfortunate impromptu speaking difficulty that Bush has when speaking off the cuff. Really embarrassing and hard to watch, just like with Bush.

Kris Kristofferson's crusty, empire-building, power-mad, money-grubbing, Sagebrush-Rebellion character scared the hell out of me in the same way Dick Cheney does, as did R. Dreyfuss' Karl Rove-like character. Both were excellent as the roles fit them well. Wayyyyyy creepy both, but even more scary to know that real people exist that are just exactly that way and are running our country!!!

The Huston family entry in this film was the loser protagonist, but a weak choice for the leading role due to his too-laid-back style and little boy, disingenuous big smile, plus his family's obvious star-making push behind him. "Let's get the boy a job" shouldn't be the reason for casting movie leads. A more bulldogged, but younger James Woods or Richard Dreyfus-type lead would have been much more credible in the role, and probably would have saved the film. Darryl Hannah was very good in her small role as the slutty, trust-fund sister of the candidate, uselessly taking up space in life but apparently giving lots of men good times in the sack through the years.(On 2nd thought, maybe not so useless after all.)

Overall, this film made me sad and uncomfortable. Sad to know that it characterized so well the political attitudes in the American presidential office today, the very one that will make all of us suffer greatly until it is finally unseated. But, also sad that the film was not put together a bit better with the good actors and story it had. Then, it could have been as effective and as good as "Wag The Dog".

I was disappointed by this. Oh, it is great fun goofing on any politician, the more smarmy and sanctimonious the better. But I can get political goofs by the dump truck load from elsewhere. What I expected was something as gently incisive as, say, "Doonesbury," but with the cinematic skills we know Sayles has. Something as gentle and sharp as "tanner on Tanner."

We have three threads here. The first is the depiction of the system, the handlers and supporters that "make" a president. We all know how it is; many politicians admit it and nearly all journalists report on it. There isn't a shred of newness in this thread, and surely not out of Dreyfuss.

There's a second component having to do with the story that wraps the thing. Now here is where I expected some art. What we end up with a single big corporation as the bad guy, no, beyond that a single corporate man. Then we see how his misdeeds unravel a bit. Sure, we have payoffs, bribery, rampant disregard for the environment and a cover-up.

But see. The thing to make fun of is how some reduce big complex issues to simple narratives. How they take a million threads of a complex tapestry with inscrutable hues and patterns and reduce it to a paper towel with flag patterns. So why do the same thing when satirizing them? Why? It isn't as if there aren't people in the film world incapable of doing this? Or was it just a rush job?

Most people let all that slip because Chris Cooper's version is too delicious. Here's the problem with this: its not disturbing enough. The thing with the target's speech is how he needs to have his mouth work, but his mind cannot produce the coherent thought fast enough, so it looks for stored phrases and tries to evaluate them for appropriateness on the fly. This gives both odd pauses and sometimes goofy leaps in concepts and metaphors.

Listen to Cooper and pay attention to the leaps. Both are fabricated for dramatic effect. The pauses are regular. They're not even, but they have multiples: pause, twice as long three times as long. And they have a rhythm that if you listen makes a sort of sense.

Now look at the linguistic leaps. They have the same patterns, regular semantic distances. That's because we as viewers have to be in on the joke. We know he will jump and precisely how far. We just don't know the direction. See, humor is in the unexpected and in order for it to work, you need to set expectations.

Now, dear reader, listen to the target. He is not creating something as art, he is just living. What you will find is a well-studied artifact of a man whose cognitive centers have been damaged by cocaine saturation. There is no regularity. Pauses are random. The semantic distances are random. That's the whole point. This is what you find in substance abusers. Always. It is not dumbness but drug damage.

Oddly the National Institutes of Health had a great research program on this because all sorts of conditions like Alzheimers can be diagnosed by measuring these speech effects. But once the link was make to cocaine users, the program was terminated. Now that would make a good movie, Huh?

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Limp satire misses almost every mark. The target appears to be Bush, but none of Bush's real weaknesses are underscored with any satiric edge - speeches by Bush himself are funnier than those delivered by Candidate Pillager. In fact the script can't decide whether it's a real satire or a dramatic comment on political problems faced by illegal aliens. At any rate, the pacing of the comic moments is pretty bad - there's no oomph here, no energy. The acting also lacks energy - it is clear the actors aren't sure what Sayles wants from them - a matter made worse by the fact that every character is embarrassingly miscast.

This film is a shocking disappointment for admirers of Sayles' previous exceptionally fine work. What the heck went wrong here? And now I see Sayles is slated to do a "Juraissic Park" sequel? Obviously something's gone bad for this man's career - I hope he can pull it back together. But not with a film this incomplete.

So, at first I was skeptical. I thought, oh boy another clichéd jab at George W. Bush. There was some of that but the movie went further and came out pretty decent. See, Bush isn't my favorite but I'm not so obsessed to want to watch an entire movie about it.

OK, so this "fictional political candidate" -- basically Chris Cooper doing a good George W. impression -- is a bumbling idiot named Dicky Pillager (oh, my hand...it's so HEAVY!) who is not so much a "bad guy" as the people around him are. The movie is a fun exploration of Dick's diverse family and the frightening political machine of his PR team. It slowly turns into a mystery story, kind of like Chinatown or some private eye story with a high angle of a smoky office shot through a lazy ceiling fan. This movie has no smoky office with a fan though.

It's a decent story. I'm sure there are some "clever" jabs at the current president that we've heard a million times before. "Oh, he's killing the earth!" kind of stuff. It's not as irritating and self-righteous as it sounds. There are some jabs right back at the "crazy hippies" running a scathing anti-Pillager website. It's good to consider that what you think is true about your elected leaders is the product of spin doctoring and grooming.

Good actors, decent story, not bad.