The Contender
***1/2
Cinema Releases - April 20, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 126
minutes. Written and directed by Rod Lurie. Starring Joan Allen, Gary Oldman,
Jeff Bridges, Christian Slater, Sam Elliot, William
Petersen.
She will not dignify their questions with responses.
That is her bottom line. "It is beneath me," she says. "If I answer the questions
then that means it's okay for them to be asked -- and it isn't, it just
isn't."
She is Laine Hanson, Senator for Ohio, played
by Joan Allen in another of her great and Oscar-nominated performances. President
Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) wants her for his second-in-command, as his
original Vice President has died of a heart attack, he's near the end of
his term, and he thinks putting a woman in high office would be a terrific
swansong. In opposition is Shelley Runyon (Gary Oldman), a Republican member
of the House of Representatives who sneers at the idea of a woman at the
top of the executive branch, and leaks evidence to the press that Hanson
took part in a frat-house orgy when she was nineteen.
Is the tale true? Are the pictures real? Hanson
will not confirm or deny. Her sexual past is none of anyone's business, and
that is that. Silence makes her look guilty, but all she has to say about
that is "Principles only matter when they're inconvenient". She wants to
be confirmed or rejected based solely on her qualifications.
"The Contender" tells this story
so well that it makes for compulsive viewing. The intensity of the issues
involved, the rhythm of political conversation and the texture of the corridors
of power… all fascinating. The first time I saw the movie was on a DVD
screener from DreamWorks, sent to me so I'd see the movie in time for the
Online Film Critics Society awards. I opened the package, slipped in the
disc, intended to preview the movie for a few minutes and watch it some other
time, and found myself unable to turn away.
There are few things more involving than watching
someone sticking to their guns. "The Contender" also offers strong subplots
-- that of Senator Jack Hathaway (William Petersen), for example, a leading
Democrat who seems to be most suited to the position of Vice President. Even
Runyon would promise him a smooth confirmation. But he's just been in an
incident where he had a chance to save a woman from drowning, and he failed
-- a heroic screw-up, it seems, but too much of a screw-up for Evans to put
the guy in office, and perhaps, we eventually learn, not even heroic at
all.
The screenplay, by former film critic Rod Lurie,
gives us a plethora of fascinating characters. Of course in centre stage
is Laine Hanson, the best kind of powerful woman -- she doesn't feel the
need to put on an icy façade to assert masculine decisiveness, because
she quite naturally knows how to walk the line between humanity and strength.
Then there is President Evans, played by Bridges with a Clintonesque drawl
and charming smile, who makes small-talk and puts on eccentricities like
constantly ordering food in front of guests, before jumping in for the kill
when they have their guard down by speaking in a way that sounds friendly
but is actually frank and merciless.
Runyon is especially interesting; incidental dialogue
informs us that he was instrumental in passing hate crimes legislation and
has respect for presidents like Kennedy and Lincoln… and yet he's clearly
misogynistic, dishonest, and doesn't play fair. Like Kenneth Starr, he takes
a position of elevated importance while groping around in reductive sleaze.
His wife tells him at one point "You've done so much good, and now you're
gonna tear it all down to become a second-rate Joe McCarthy."
The only part of the movie that rings false is
the investigation into Senator Hathaway's encounter with the drowning girl.
It's structured in a way so that we don't know what's going on until the
end; all we see are cutaways to an FBI woman asking random people random
questions, and we're supposed to assume it's a background check on Hanson.
The red herring is pointless -- if the movie just told us what was going
on, instead of giving us a cheap set-up for a twist that need not be a surprise,
these scenes would have more of a purposeful feel.
Still, the heart of "The Contender" is done
brilliantly, and it is a powerful political picture. When Hanson learns that
she could lose her shot at the Vice Presidency by keeping her mouth shut,
she shrugs and says "People have given up a whole lot more for a whole lot
less." It's not that she doesn't care; she just realises that selling out
one's principles to get some power is ultimately a pointless trade-off. Imagine
if everyone thought like that.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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