Ten minutes into it I found myself thinking: "All right, we got a movie on our hands". To see it sink so embarrassingly low was even more enraging in light of this promising start.
'The Contender' pushes an extremely liberal agenda, which did not bother me in the least. Its hypocritical and manipulative nature, on the other hand, most definitely did.
So, let's get right into it....
About 4/5 of the film are spent drilling our heads with the notion of Senator Laine Hanson's sex life, past or present, being nobody's business but her own.
No problem there!
Either publicly or even privately behind closed doors with presidential staff (that's 100% on her side, by the way) this VP designate awaiting congressional confirmation refuses to address allegations of involvement in a wild group sex orgy during her college days, because it is, as she continually insists, beneath her dignity and against her principles to discuss such matters.
Fair enough, again!
While she continues refusing to acknowledge sexual past as an issue in her quest to become Vice President, preferring instead to focus on healthcare, education, foreign policy, etc. - the director Rod Lurie uses every visual and storytelling trick in the book to convince us that the allegations are true (short of stating it explicitly).
Consider a scene near the beginning when Laine, after a hard day' work, comes home to her husband (also involved in politics as his wife's advisor and her former senatorial campaign manager) who informs her of the separate background check, outside of the one conducted by FBI. This secret investigation headed by Republican Congressman Shelley Runyon (Gary Oldman) went deeper than the FBI's, managing to unearth the sex story.
What is her reaction upon seeing a file containing "incriminating" photos dug up by Runyon's people that were handed to her side by one of Congressman's assistants who had a sudden change of heart and didn't want to participate any further in this character assassination?
Well, she slumps in a chair looking defeated. She clutches her forehead and "flashbacks" of the college gangbang start to roll as "memories from the past". Knowing what we know by the end about what she already knows at the time, would you not say this scene is wildly misconstrued, manipulative and unnatural?
I would.
Still, this is all pretty much fine & dandy. Deliberately misleading your audience in order to build up drama is a legitimate directorial technique. Granted, it's more suited for an Agatha Christie frivolous whodunit than for something pretending to be a serious political thriller.
Even if you let that one slide, reasoning: 'OK, the director played with us a little to underscore just how irrelevant these allegations are'; then why was the scene on the White House lawn (Laine and President talking and smoking cigars - cigars, get it, wink, wink, Clinton, nudge, nudge, Monica - while a banquet is going on inside) included in the movie when it goes against every single idea argued for up to that point?
Well, it's there because these hypocritical filmmakers aren't brave enough to stick to their guns. They feel a need to exonerate Sen. Hanson in the eyes of the audience despite the fact they just spent majority of their film convincing us how that is precisely something which doesn't need doing - either by her or by anyone else.
To make it more plausible, their conversation is set up as a private exchange between Laine and Jackson as opposed to VP and President or Senator and President!?
Yeah right, she's seeing this guy for like the 4th time in her life at this point and she's going to spill her guts in front of him over a stogie, even after vehemently refusing to utter a word on the topic in face of unspeakable media and peer pressure. The filmmakers obviously realized how inconsistent and out of place her behaviour in this key scene is, so they furnished her with a cheesy line to the effect of: "Well. OK, you win Mr. President. There is just something about almost puking on a cigar that gets a girl to open up" before she clarifies every single detail of the "orgy" for him and more importantly FOR US.
I mean pleeeease! As that great 20th century thinker and philosopher Judge Judy would say - don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. It is painfully obvious the only aim of this unnatural scene is to have the audience NOT go home thinking Senator, and soon to be VP, Laine Hanson used to be a whore of Paris Hilton proportions. And all this after one of the movie's main points is that it wouldn't make her any less fit for vice presidential duties even if she was.
Gutless and pathetic!!!
No wonder Gary Oldman distanced himself from such contriving garbage.
Towards the end, things, amazingly, go from bad to even worse with President Evans barging in triumphantly on a congressional sitting to deliver a ridiculous speech that touches on issues of privacy and women's rights. What was set up to be the film's culmination comes off as one of the most cringe-inducing and embarrassing scenes in recent American cinematic history. Parts of that diatribe must have been lifted straight from Clinton administration speechwriters' rough drafts.
As icing on the cake, before closing credits we get a fade to black screen with words 'For our daughters', by which time I was reaching for something to puke in.
And I wasn't even smoking a cigar.
'The Contender' pushes an extremely liberal agenda, which did not bother me in the least. Its hypocritical and manipulative nature, on the other hand, most definitely did.
So, let's get right into it....
About 4/5 of the film are spent drilling our heads with the notion of Senator Laine Hanson's sex life, past or present, being nobody's business but her own.
No problem there!
Either publicly or even privately behind closed doors with presidential staff (that's 100% on her side, by the way) this VP designate awaiting congressional confirmation refuses to address allegations of involvement in a wild group sex orgy during her college days, because it is, as she continually insists, beneath her dignity and against her principles to discuss such matters.
Fair enough, again!
While she continues refusing to acknowledge sexual past as an issue in her quest to become Vice President, preferring instead to focus on healthcare, education, foreign policy, etc. - the director Rod Lurie uses every visual and storytelling trick in the book to convince us that the allegations are true (short of stating it explicitly).
Consider a scene near the beginning when Laine, after a hard day' work, comes home to her husband (also involved in politics as his wife's advisor and her former senatorial campaign manager) who informs her of the separate background check, outside of the one conducted by FBI. This secret investigation headed by Republican Congressman Shelley Runyon (Gary Oldman) went deeper than the FBI's, managing to unearth the sex story.
What is her reaction upon seeing a file containing "incriminating" photos dug up by Runyon's people that were handed to her side by one of Congressman's assistants who had a sudden change of heart and didn't want to participate any further in this character assassination?
Well, she slumps in a chair looking defeated. She clutches her forehead and "flashbacks" of the college gangbang start to roll as "memories from the past". Knowing what we know by the end about what she already knows at the time, would you not say this scene is wildly misconstrued, manipulative and unnatural?
I would.
Still, this is all pretty much fine & dandy. Deliberately misleading your audience in order to build up drama is a legitimate directorial technique. Granted, it's more suited for an Agatha Christie frivolous whodunit than for something pretending to be a serious political thriller.
Even if you let that one slide, reasoning: 'OK, the director played with us a little to underscore just how irrelevant these allegations are'; then why was the scene on the White House lawn (Laine and President talking and smoking cigars - cigars, get it, wink, wink, Clinton, nudge, nudge, Monica - while a banquet is going on inside) included in the movie when it goes against every single idea argued for up to that point?
Well, it's there because these hypocritical filmmakers aren't brave enough to stick to their guns. They feel a need to exonerate Sen. Hanson in the eyes of the audience despite the fact they just spent majority of their film convincing us how that is precisely something which doesn't need doing - either by her or by anyone else.
To make it more plausible, their conversation is set up as a private exchange between Laine and Jackson as opposed to VP and President or Senator and President!?
Yeah right, she's seeing this guy for like the 4th time in her life at this point and she's going to spill her guts in front of him over a stogie, even after vehemently refusing to utter a word on the topic in face of unspeakable media and peer pressure. The filmmakers obviously realized how inconsistent and out of place her behaviour in this key scene is, so they furnished her with a cheesy line to the effect of: "Well. OK, you win Mr. President. There is just something about almost puking on a cigar that gets a girl to open up" before she clarifies every single detail of the "orgy" for him and more importantly FOR US.
I mean pleeeease! As that great 20th century thinker and philosopher Judge Judy would say - don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. It is painfully obvious the only aim of this unnatural scene is to have the audience NOT go home thinking Senator, and soon to be VP, Laine Hanson used to be a whore of Paris Hilton proportions. And all this after one of the movie's main points is that it wouldn't make her any less fit for vice presidential duties even if she was.
Gutless and pathetic!!!
No wonder Gary Oldman distanced himself from such contriving garbage.
Towards the end, things, amazingly, go from bad to even worse with President Evans barging in triumphantly on a congressional sitting to deliver a ridiculous speech that touches on issues of privacy and women's rights. What was set up to be the film's culmination comes off as one of the most cringe-inducing and embarrassing scenes in recent American cinematic history. Parts of that diatribe must have been lifted straight from Clinton administration speechwriters' rough drafts.
As icing on the cake, before closing credits we get a fade to black screen with words 'For our daughters', by which time I was reaching for something to puke in.
And I wasn't even smoking a cigar.