Jan

5

CASINO JACK

Directed by George Hickenlooper

The second-banana movie that doesn't quite know "jack".

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Ruth Marshall, Graham Greene, Hannah Endicott-Douglas, Barry Pepper, John Robinson, Jason Weinberg, Spencer Garrett, Yok Come Ho, Anna Hardwick.

Some months ago, in May of 2010, I wrote a review of the austere but satisfying Alex Gibney directed documentary, CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY, about the corrupt, over avid lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Given that Spacey is a tough actor, often given to overpowering the very characters he is tasked to represent. And personally, I have a slight grievance against him for his rude response to me when I tried interviewing him some years ago. Aside from my approach, though, Spacey is notoriously private, and refuses to reveal much or anything at all about his personal life (though speculation often devolves on unflattering presumptions). His visceral portrayal of power-monger Abramoff does not offset or mitigate the superior information and convincing power of the docu, however. Most upsetting was the feeling that Spacey was fundamentally miscast as the "Orthodox" Jew Abramoff, since for anyone in the know, Spacey or the script had him implausibly married to a Gentile, worshipping at peculiar and untenable times of the night, obviously flouting Orthodoxy, behaving hypocritically when it suited his needs despite religious strictures, and in general behaving disreputably more after the fashion of bad-boy Spacey's notions than Abramoff's actual misdemeanors.

The film is roughly, as we all know, how a hotshot DC insider uber-lobbyist and his oleaginous protégé (Barry Pepper) go down hard as their ever-more-stratospheric schemes to peddle influence for Indian tribes and their money-raking competing casinos eventually wend to Washington wickedness of various sorts, corruption, even murder. Tom DeLay, now apparently a dancer, figures prominently, as do the panoply of senators who did not have exactly Purell-sanitized hands in the dealings.

Irresistible as a ripped-from-the-headlines tale, as an also-ran, it loses much steam to make for the killer film it aims to be. Hollywood has been guilty of this re-make fever to an absurd degree of late, remaking films a scant year or so after they come from the UK or South American or India or even Japanese and elsewhere in the Pacific rim: Stieg Larsson's triptych of corrupt publishing in Swedish life films were just released, were wildly popular worldwide last year, and are already being remade and released as American versions. Copycat me-too-ism, anyone?

 Director Hickenlooper misses the boat in making this so-called biopic repellent on levels that the docu did not. One left immediately to disinfect oneself after the credits rolled: The whole film had a sleaze about it, even granting Spacey and his cast's gleeful and energetic portrayals. Even the Native Americans portrayed are clearly not from the right tribes, as we recognize too many of the players as bit characters from too many other cowboy-and-Indian lensers, TV, or trial films of yore. There is the strong whiff of overall inauthenticity about the story, and the constant eddying between the viewer's recall of the factual documentary and this macho'ed-up tsk-tsk of a film–so soon on the Alex Gibney original's heels, a bad release-decision point–makes for an unpleasant experience.

The planning for the film clearly began in the heyday of the current administration, late in 2008/early 2009. But we are in a different time now. We are not all delighted with finger pointing at the presumed misdeeds of prior administrations' miscreants, and the subject matter appears not to be as riveting as it might have seemed two years ago. Another SOCIAL NETWORK or even WALL STREET 2: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, it ain't, much as the protagonist huffs and puffs, vents and re-invents the time-dishonored career of influence peddling.


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