Game Change

Excellent movie! Reminds me that Sarah Palin was not anywhere near ready to be picked for Vice President. Movie does make you feel sorry for Palin. But, than again thinking more about what has happened since the 2008 election and NOT feeling sorry for her. If she were anything like the "victim" then she would NOT keep trying to be in the national public eye. I sure hope she finally realizes she will NEVER be a national political figure. Anything else is just a scary thought. Julianne Moore did an excellent job playing Sarah Palin and she got it right in saying this movie shows what's wrong with our democracy. When someone like John McCain can pick a Vice President candidate purely for political purposes KNOWing she was NOT fit to be President (which IS the primary job of a Vice President), then you know this is a problem for our country.

Woody Harrelson is a lock for an Emmy nom, and more than likely Julianne Moore and Ed Harris get one as well. Palin may take issue with the moments in the movie that show her getting her diva on, but it's generally a very humanizing portrayal of her as a mom and wife who may have been in over her head but did her level best to soldier on. It's certainly not a caricature of her or a hatchet job. Moore, to her credit. seems to have gone out of her way to construct a reasonably balanced view of an extremely polarizing figure.

Had to love that line that Ed Harris delivers late in the movie where he tells Palin not to allow herself to be coopted by the Rush Limbaughs who will destroy the party. HBO couldn't have timed the TV premiere any better. Just lucky or prescient?

You know what I expected from this film? A brutally simplistic mockery of the last Republican campaign just before the next one starts happening – it seemed an open goal and it seemed that the film was made too soon to be able to be objective and probably had no intention of being so anyway. Imagine my surprise when I found myself watching a film that, some cheap shots aside, is generally fair and balanced in how it plays back the McCain campaign. The film picks up the plot just as McCain is struggling against Obama and decides to play a wild-card by bringing in a poorly vetted Senator Palin to try and win key voter share back. The gambit starts out working great but, for several reasons, it quickly starts to unravel while the Obama campaign only gets stronger.

It is worth me saying at this point that I am pretty liberal in my politics and that I did nothing but laugh at Palin throughout her campaign, all the way till I shed a few tears over Obama's victory speech as I watched it at 6am in the UK. I continue to look at her working as a "talking point" pundit on Fox and marvel at her ability to provide generic bile and if I am honest, I would not have been totally dismayed if this film had been a two-hour kicking of her. However what we actually get is much better and fairer than this and it is only really at the back end of the film where it shows its colours by having a few unnecessary lines and digs thrown in there to no real benefit. The film shows that he McCain campaign took a necessary risk with their candidate and that the risk didn't pay off. It shows that Palin is not some glassy eyed idiot but rather a person who is overwhelmed at first but then makes the mistake of believing her own hype on the news after one successful debate.

This is done in such a way that it works – it doesn't suggest that it was deliberate or that these people are those portrayed on the news, but rather than both decisions and mistakes were made. If anything one could argue that the film doesn't do enough to show how much the campaign got away from under McCain's team – look at the "he's an Arab" moment here, it is much more gentle than the reality, which saw McCain frantically grasp the microphone from his target voter and quickly correct her – in the film it is much softener than that. This change in the campaign is fairly pinned on Palin and it shows her starting to believe her own press and believe that being herself is the all whereas really her stage-managed self was the thing that worked. I liked that her advisors all had that worried look when she spoke, all knew they were training someone who desperately needed training as opposed to polishing and all could see the risk going south.

She isn't presented as an idiot though. Palin is a real person here and you feel for her as she feels out of her depth and also as she convinces herself that she is more than she really is. It also allows you to understand why she goes this path and it is certainly not a mockery of her because it is fair and it is intelligently done. There are several moments and lines later in the film that don't play as fair though and these are rather unnecessary and blunt, but mostly it is well done. The cast do pretty well considering. Moore is not just another Tina Fey but, thanks to the script, really gets her character and makes something of it. Harris starts well as McCain but his character is rather lost in events and I thought he deserved more – and, in fairness, I thought the real McCain was better. Harrelson delivers a strong performance throughout and it is in his character that the impact of Palin is played out – he gives it straight as a political player and it works well. The support cast is full of faces from MacNicol to Livingston to Altman and generally they all do a good job.

Overall then, this is an engaging and intelligent film that more or less manages to be fair and balanced in regards the presentation of the McCain campaign. It shows the decisions and risks within the campaign and the development of brand Palin in a way that is clear and even-handed and it makes for a good film as a result. Not perfect but certainly much better than what I expected.

It's 2008; near the end of the Presidential Campaign between John McCain and then candidate Barack Obama. McCain is trailing in the polls and his campaign realizes he has to do something to energize his base and turn the election in his favour. He makes a decision that would not only have significant impact on the race, but the entire Republican party and ultimately define his political career.

First off the casting is excellent; both Julianne Moore and Ed Harris are perfectly cast and they deliver uncanny performances of Sarah Palin and John McCain. I found at times I got lost in the characters and forgot I was watching actors act; they were THAT good (this is really rare for me). Julianne Moore is very deserving of all the buzz she's been getting and I'm disappointed Ed Harris hasn't quite got as much publicity; his John McCain was not that far behind Moore's Palin (but make no mistake, Moore is the star here).

I loved the editing of the film as they fused together actual footage from the campaign trail and with scenes recreated in the film to great effect. I also found that the film shed some light on aspects of the campaign I didn't really think about; i.e. the other side of Sarah Palin. She was clearly someone who was just thrust into spotlight and was clearly not ready for the big stage. Moore really humanized her and did something that nothing else did that entire election cycle; not the media nor the politicos: it made me feel sorry for Sarah Palin (I have to say, I wasn't expecting that, not at all). There's quite a few laughs as well in the movie; including moments from hilarious foreign policy coaching sessions to the now infamous interview with Katie Couric when she essentially says "I can see Russia from my house" and couldn't name news papers she reads.

Now the movie isn't perfect. The film is a bit late in terms of release and I can't help but think that had a bit to do with some the negative reviews; for those outside the political bubble, the film may have lost a bit of it's punch almost 4 years after the fact. For me however, a political junkie, the film was still quite poignant. You could also argue the film has an agenda; i.e. to paint Palin as someone who cared more about how she looked and her own career more than John McCain's campaign, not very intelligent and reckless as she was derailing his campaign by "going rogue" (going off message) near the end. Although I personally believe all these to be true, the film does try to lead the viewer at times to that conclusion and I would've preferred if it was a bit more unbiased and allowed the viewer to form their own opinion.

At the end of the day I think the film successfully presented the theme of being honest with one's self; that when it comes to getting ahead in life, you need to be true to yourself and your values. The movie conveyed this through the characters around Palin in moments of reflection. In the film (and in real life) John McCain wasn't true to himself and it cost him the election (and maybe a bit of his soul too). At the end you could see he had begun to realize that; there's a great scene where John is at a town hall and an audience member says that "Obama is a Muslim" and he quickly stopped the audience member, corrected her and stated that it was not true and he didn't believe that. In that moment it was clear he realized he had gone astray as his campaign was now solely relying on really low brow tactics to try to save the election. It was as significant a moment in the film as it was in the real campaign.

I'm left with a really interesting moment from the film, where one of McCain's Republican advisers confesses that she didn't vote (which has to be nothing short of treason when you work for a campaign):

"I didn't vote... I couldn't do it... I didn't vote." (She starts to cry and moves to be hugged by Woody Harrelson's character (Steve)... "I couldn't do it.".

I can't help but think a lot of Americans had to feel exactly the same way in 2008. That single moment says everything you need to know about Sarah Palin and the 2008 Presidential Election. Kudos to a well made film.

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Review: Game Change (HBO)

"Recount" creator Jay Roach returns to the politico ring with "Game Change" starring Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, the man behind John McCain's 2008 run for the White House. A straight recount of the vetting of Sarah Palin to the VP post and it's compelling to see Julianne Moore be Sarah Palin (I forgot there was an actress playing her shortly into the movie). Ed Harris fills McCain's shoes with a respectful performance with dignity. All the actors are great, but Moore is absolutely stunning in the dramatic scenes. Roach presents some great moments in history as Palin watches Tina Fey doing an impression of her on SNL (surreal to watch an actor as Palin watching Fey doing Palin). I thought the film makers did a great balance, showing Schmidt as a flawed man who made the mistake of choosing an independent minded woman who has a few major flaws of her own (she is as misinformed as most of the right wing base). Great movie and Moore made me forget she was acting, a perfect performance!