La conspiración

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Rod Lurie is living my fantasy. After a career as a movie critic, he is now directing some of Hollywood's best (and under-utilized) actors and actresses. This little thriller is fun to watch thanks mostly to the skills of those on the screen. All of these actors should work more ... SHARE your talent. Jeff Bridges is a very pompous, yet charming, smooth talking president. I assume the list to play the president was short, thanks to a couple of script lines about Clinton. Joan Allen is excellent as the cool senator with the lurid past (?) who is nominated for the VP slot. Gary Oldman, who continues to reinvent the role of CREEP, steals every scene he is in. Of course, this happens in all of his movies! It is always nice to see Sam Elliott and William Petersen on screen. And I guess Christian Slater is trying to salvage a career after the disastrous "Very Bad Things". He has lost some smugness and tempered his Jack Nicholson dialect. My only disappointment with the movie was in the script. Although I love the subject matter and the issues raised, I kept waiting for the shoe to drop on Gary Oldman's charater's deep, dark secret. Jeff Bridges stifling his political career seem quite the letdown. Would have really enjoyed a few more plot twists to really test the audience and cast. My tidbit for this one comes from the career of Sam Elliott. Next time you are watching "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", check out a young Sam Elliott in the early card playing scene. Also, William Petersen's power-hungry wife in "The Contender" is played by Kristen Shaw, a carry-over from Rod Lurie's film, "Deterrence".

Writer/director Rod Lurie's `The Contender' marks a significant advance in both technique and storytelling ability for this fledgling filmmaker over his sole previous cinematic effort, `Deterrence.' This former L.A. film critic-turned-filmmaker has created a crackerjack political thriller attuned to the temper of its times. In this era in which one politician after another has fallen victim to the cutthroat `politics of personal destruction' as practiced in the media, in the committee hearing room and in the backrooms of campaign headquarters around the nation, `The Contender' emerges as a timely, astute and politically savvy drama.

Like most contemporary films that deal with political issues, `The Contender' demonstrates an obvious left leaning bias. As usual, it is the Democrats who are portrayed as the righteous speakers of truth and the Republicans who are shown as the scheming, unctuous and conniving dispensers of hatred and rumormongering. Jeff Bridges stars as President Jackson Evans, a well-meaning, seemingly moral man who, upon the sudden death of his vice president, nominates a woman, Senator Laine Hanson, to be his replacement. Gary Oldman plays the Republican chairman who will stop at nothing in his efforts to torpedo the nomination, even if that means exposing her rather torrid sexual past for all the world to see (although, in many ways, his obsession with ruining the chances of a candidate he feels to be less qualified in favor of one who is more beloved as a national figure makes little practical sense because wouldn't he, as a member of the rival party, be MORE inclined to support someone he thought would bring trouble to the present administration?)

If you can see past the partisan propaganda, you will find `The Contender' to be one of the most riveting films of the past several years. In many ways, it reminds one of those Biblical spectaculars that moviemakers like Cecil B. DeMille used to churn out in the 1950's, the ones that would allow us to wallow in the depiction of all sorts of `sinful' activities, yet when the divine judgments began to fall on the perpetrators, permit us to feel morally superior to it all at the same time. In a similar way, `The Contender,' may come out foursquare against the obsession we seem to have concerning the sex lives of our elected officials – but it sure has a fun time devoting two solid hours to the topic. And its fun is ours.

One of the reasons that `The Contender' succeeds so well is because Laine Hanson, as portrayed by the brilliant Joan Allen, is an endlessly fascinating and enigmatic character. We never know quite what to make of her and it is this sense of moral imbalance that draws us in to her plight. Had she been made an innocent victim or a goody-two-shoes, she would quickly lose our interest. As the President, seemingly more concerned with ordering up spectacular dishes from the White House kitchen than with the pressing concerns of affairs of state, Jeff Bridges cuts just as believable and compelling a figure.

As with virtually all films of a political nature, the characters' actions are occasionally inexplicable within the context of practical politics. For example, President Evans rejects one of his top candidates for the VP position for ludicrous reasons. When Governor Jack Hathaway attempts but fails to rescue a woman from her vehicle that has crashed to the bottom of a river, Evans tells Hathaway that he believes the Republicans will try to bring up parallels to Chappaquiddick in an attempt to sink his nomination. Not only is that a patently absurd possibility, but Evans seems blithely unconcerned about the much worse drubbing he and his eventual nominee end up undergoing. Which leads us to the next implausibility – Evans' sticking by Hanson far past the point where any real president would have asked for the candidate to withdraw her name. Oh well, `The Contender' may not always ring true in its plotting, but it definitely gets the job done as a piece of titillating pulp drama.

My only serious complaint with the film comes in its closing stretches. Perhaps it is too much, in these days of mandatory happy endings and feel-good emotionalism, to expect the type of clear-eyed cynical conclusions we were treated to in movies like `The Candidate' or `The Best Man,' but the upbeat, fairy tale resolution here is unworthy of all the good stuff that has gone before it. By climbing onto a soapbox and deigning to lecture to us all, Lurie cops out on both Hanson and the audience - striving for the type of phony inspirationalism that went out with `Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' way back in the 1930's. Such an obvious sop to the box office leaves us with a bit of a sour aftertaste after all is said and done. (Also, Lurie needs to shed himself of the gimmick he seems to have latched onto in both his films thus far – that of the melodramatic `surprise' turnabout ending. It didn't work in `Deterrence' and it doesn't work here).

Yet, despite its sundry flaws, `The Contender' emerges as one of the most compelling and fast-moving two hours you are likely to see in a long time. You may feel like taking a shower when it's all over (maybe that explains the need Lurie may have had in providing a `moral bath' in the last 15 minutes or so), but you will at least have had a great time getting dirty.

Excellent political thriller-drama with a great cast which certainly delivered. The story isn't very original, but that doesn't bother. Jeff Bridges was very good and funny as the president of the United States. He was always very relaxed and human during his role. The attitude, the way of thinking, the nonchalance... it made his performance quite amazing. Jeff Bridges is one of my favourite actors. He capable of playing every role. Be honest, who would have thought "the dude" would make an excellent president as well?

Furthermore I loved Joan Allen's and Gary Oldman's performance as well. Both were excellent. As well as Christian Slater playing the young idealist. "The Contender" certainly deserves this rating and I'm convinced it even deserves a higher rating, something like 7.3.

"The Contender" is political thriller-drama which is certainly worth watching. Although this movie doesn't want to make a certain (moral) statement, I loved the following quote by Joan Allen's character: "Principles only mean something when you stick to them when its inconvenient."

9/10

This is a really good film, much better than the 6.9 it has here. However, if you watch it on Amazon Video, DO NOT watch the trailer. Incredibly the idiots who set this up make the actual key scene, the whole twist upon which the movie stands, the trailer.

The WHOLE SCENE.

Absolute idiots.

The Contender is a film with the potential to take any conscientious person with even a mild interest in how governments are run , and who the leaders are through a non-stop roller-coaster ride of challenge, triumph, pain, failure, and morality. Although I intensely appreciated this movie, I do not believe this could have been an oscar-winning film because the truths it expresses with regards to the presence of women in high ranking political positions far outway its acting and directing talents, with the possible exception of Gary Oldman's role as Shelly Runyon, who was frighteningly convincing at being an absolutely awful man. I enjoyed this movie because of its intention to show what women in politics really face. The strength displayed by Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) while up for vice president is nothing short of inspirational. Gary Oldman's character provides us with a good idea of how manipulative and ruthless people can be when in a position of power and, ironically, when they have been put in a position to judge another's morality. This film seems so realistic that we tend to forget it's a movie. It makes us question, why does a person have to be surrounded by such controversy and be forced to take on such a defensive position, simply for being a woman? What I appreciated is the refusal of Hanson to succomb to the pressure of taking that defensive position, regardless of the truth. Of course, the other refreshing aspect in this movie is Jeff Bridges' role as an ideal president.

All in all, it is a long overdue account of reality, with great character development but not recommended for those with short attention spans, as it is dialogue, and lots of it.