Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by whackamus (i) on April 18, 2001 at 02:27:59

In Reply to: "The Contender" posted by MiKe- on April 15, 2001 at 09:21:33:

Saw this recently and -- by movie's end -- felt that I'd watched two different and not-exactly-complementary films.

For the first 2/3 of **The Contender**, I was completely entranced: It was involving, penetrating, funny and (yes) frightening. It also seemed to achieve a different kind of film-making altogether and seemed in places to affect an (ingenious) pseudo documentary-style approach (complete with several non-obtrusive shots that could well have been filmed by means of a handheld camera) that really gave one the impression of a behind-the-scenes familiarity with the political process. Some of the characters may themselves have been gross caricatures (Oldman's superbly acted Runyon foremost among them; Allen's very well-acted but not necessarily compelling Hanson), but the story itself was positively engrossing.

The second 1/3 of the film seemed like something out of Olde Hollywood, or out of Non-Nuanced Didactic Screenwriting 101, or (indulge me here) out of a Russ Meyer film (with a kind of sledge-hammer-like subtlety supplanting in this case Meyer's considerably more laudable weakness for large and ubiquitous breasts). The penetrating analysis and involving storyline of **The Contender's** better two-thirds was to some extent derogated by virtue of its latter one-third's eagerness to pontificate. I'm a self-described liberal democrat and *I* found it well-nigh nauseating, for chrissake.

Nonetheless, I'd highly recommend this movie. Most of it's good, after all (and when it's good, it's *damned* good -- as good as it gets, even), and the performances are almost uniformly top-notch: Gary Oldman disappears inside the role of vitriolic conservative Shelly Runyon (I didn't even recognize him at first!); Jeff Bridges is masterful as he portrays a fictional chief executive who seems to have borrowed his appetite from Bill Clinton (or, for that matter, from 350 lb. former president William Howard Taft) and his mannerisms from Peter Falk's Columbo; Sam Elliot, delighting in a non-cowboy role, acquits himself admirably, Joan Allen delivers another very fine performance....