director/screenwriter
Rod Lurie
producers
Willi Bär
Marc Frydman
James Spies
Douglas Urbanski
cinematographer
Denis Maloney
music
Larry Groupé
editor
Michael Jablow
cast
Gary Oldman (Rep. Shelly Runyon)
Joan Allen (Sen. Laine Hanson)
Jeff Bridges (President Jackson Evans)
Christian Slater (Webster)
Sam Elliott (Newman)
William L. Petersen (Gov. Hathaway)
Saul Rubinek (Tolliver)
Philip Baker Hall (Billings)
Mariel Hemingway (Cynthia Charlton Lee)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 126m
u.s.
release: 10/13/00
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
site
|
Critics
can't help having a bias against one thing or another. I, for
example, find left-leaning entertainment hard to swallow -- not
because I'm a Republican, but quite the opposite: As a registered
Democrat and moderate liberal, I resent movies that congratulate
me for voting "correctly." At the movies, I want to
be entertained, stimulated, provoked, challenged; I don't want
my ass kissed. Since Hollywood is by and large Democrat, movies
that argue intelligently and forcefully for a view closer to
the right are in drastically short supply.
The Contender is unmistakably pro-Dem and anti-Rep. When
the lead Democratic characters are played by the amiable Jeff
Bridges and the dignified Joan Allen, and when the lead Republican
slithers onto the screen in the form of veteran snake Gary Oldman
in the ugliest balding-head wig since Bill Murray in Kingpin,
there's no doubt which side the movie is on. In a way, the movie
is to be valued, I suppose, for taking a side -- for not
being wishy-washy -- and Roger Ebert praised it in his review
for being explicit about the political parties involved (since
so many "political" movies keep it cautiously vague).
Still, I wonder if Ebert would've enjoyed the film as much if
good ol' Jeff and noble Joan played right-wingers.
Bridges plays the President of the United States, whose Vice
President died three weeks ago; casting about for a replacement,
he and his staff settle on Senator Laine Hanson (Allen), a reformed
Republican who once voted for President Clinton's impeachment
but now voices her belief in pro-choice, separation of church
and state, and stringent laws against the sales of guns and tobacco.
Hanson's route to the Vice-Presidency hits a bump when some alleged
evidence surfaces of her sexual misadventures in college -- bluntly,
her participation in a frat orgy.
Hanson stonewalls her interrogators, including the rodent-like
Rep. Shelly Runyon (Oldman), at every turn; she insists, even
to those who are trying to help her, that what she did or did
not do as a college girl is nobody's business but her own. This
is true, but it doesn't get more true through sheer repetition;
writer-director Rod Lurie jackhammers the message into our skulls
again and again, as if going after a political nominee for past
foibles were a uniquely Republican trait. Democrats, I must point
out, are equally skilled at that sort of mud-slinging; one of
the movie's better, more candid exchanges comes when Hanson,
refusing to use a bit of evidence against Runyon, says "We're
better than that," and presidential adviser Sam Elliott
(in a wise, sturdy performance) intones "No, we're not
better than that."
Jeff Bridges comes through for us; he plays his President as
a man who knows he's the top dog in any room and is secure in
that knowledge. In short, he has fun -- something in short
supply elsewhere in the film. Gary Oldman, clenched in righteous
disgust, hasn't been given the material he needs to make Runyon
more than a straw man (Oldman has claimed, fairly bitterly and
probably with some justification, that cuts were made to the
film to make it more leftist and his character less complex).
Joan Allen has been great before and will be great again; here
she's playing a glass statuette of stoic nobility, and it occurred
to me that I was watching many people spend a lot of time and
tax dollars arguing over a cipher.
Towards the finish line, The Contender weaves back and
forth, tying itself into unproductive dramatic knots to send
the audience home happy -- or at least the part of the audience
conditioned to embrace pat Hollywood endings. Everyone gets a
speech, backed by swelling listen-to-this-important-message music
-- even Gary Oldman gets a brief one, in the movie's wan stab
at bipartisanship. You may not go home happy, though, if you
believe in the separation of church and cinema. The Contender
thumps its Democratic Bible hard enough to put Jonathan Edwards
to shame. Early on, a character remarks that schools shouldn't
talk about Jesus: "They're supposed to teach, not preach."
The Contender preaches, all right, but what does it teach?
"A woman shouldn't be held to a double standard"? "Politics
can be corrupt and self-serving"? "The sun produces
light and heat"? Spare me. |