Knife Fight

The audience gets is a casserole of movie elements and little of the satisfaction that comes from watching these types of movies. It's one of those films for which I could guess the plot exactly before I saw it. You can predict the whole movie and ending easily. Worse, these characters were walking cardboards. Overall, the film was..."eh". I was bored through most of it and I left the living room with no intentions to ever see it again. From an artistic standpoint, there were some plot elements and character developments I didn't think were totally needed. They do however drive the story, which seemed to be their purpose, so I can accept them.

To get elected in office, according to 'Knife Fight', all which is found outside the conventional playbook of politics should be given opportunity, for the good candidate to become governor elected. Even if there's collateral damage attached to the level of having a college girl's life ruined, upto attempted suicides. The far-out morals choices reported today in Washup DC Politics have apparently spread out to Nation, State and County Politics Campaign affairs, where the subversion apparently has sunken back to the level of Roman Empire days, when Julius was stabbed by Brutus. The mantra of fighting crime by hiring even more dangerous criminals is something which has today infected all kinds of aspects of life, where by all means good, bad, legal and or violating state laws, will give the good Lady or Lord the much aspired seat if High Office. This is the theme which is extensively illustrated inside 'Knife Fight' where the end result seems OK. There is one downer though. When the end titles run a small parody of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is played. This is sadly one step beyond the much admired seat in the office of Hollywood fame.

Rob Lowe gained experience delivering political babble in The West Wing, and in this idealized satire about the workings and techniques of political strategists, he puts that experience to good use, delivering his quick-witted lines in typical Aaron Sorkin-ish tempo and tone. The film delivers a few jabs at the American political system, especially campaign advertising, but when push comes to shove writer/director Bill Guttentag is a little too much in love with his characters and their flaunting talent for the film to have enough edge and make a lasting impression. And while the narrative structure is semi-fresh and the agenda well-meaning enough, there's really not much progress or development to incur during the course of these ninety plus minutes. This may well be the filmmakers making a point by paralleling politics, but if so, it's as slight a point as there ever was.

As a big fan of West Wing (in spite of its heavy doses of Democratic propaganda), I recognized very soon where we were in this movie, and was happy to see West Wing alums Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff together. I thought a couple other faces might have been familiar from there, too, but nothing happened to make me care enough to go check. This is more like a fan-made "next episode" of something similar to the West Wing than like a well-developed movie project, though that's slightly more on the writing and directing end than on the acting and technical end. It isn't actually awful, but it certainly isn't that good. There's no heavy lifting to do, and perhaps as a result all of the performances seem fine but nothing rises above "fine". Nothing here challenges the performers or the director, or us, and so they, and we, just settle in for a pleasant ride.

There's no particular reason to see Knife Fight, but if you like the type of story (look at the awful things we do in election politics!) you may want to see it just for completeness. There's also no particular reason to avoid Knife Fight. Nothing in it is truly bad. However, now I wish I had just watched the far superior Ides of March (2011) again instead. Ides is an excellent modern look at the same topic also well treated in Robert Redford's The Candidate (1972). Knife Fight is not in the same league as either of those, but it is playing the same game.

If Candidate and Ides are the bookends, then Knife Fight is one of the books they hold up. I suppose that just as we have murder and romance stories written for beach reading, there could be political movies for beach watching, and this would be a fine entry there.

There's more that could be said, but honestly, how much time do you spend analyzing your beach novels?

The first rule of satire is remember that it's satire. Because there are three types of political movies. One, the Mr Smith Goes to Washington true believer movie; two, the anti political nihilist flick like The Parallax View and lastly, the satire. The two points you have to include in a satire are a, humor and b, a broad sense of farce. The problem this movie has is that it started with the goal of being satire but halfway through it drank the Kool Aid and capitulated to becoming Mr Smith. By the end, the people we're supposed to be poking fun at have become moral crusaders for the forces of good and all the things we were poking fun at have become virtues. It's neither one nor the other but a watered down mixture of both. The dirty tricks and outright crimes they commit are swept away as nothing more than data points on the road to moral supremacy. If your cause is just then not only do the ends justify the means but the dirtier they are the more virtuous the end. So without understanding how or that it is this movie becomes the most nihilistic of them all.