It’s taken a while for John Sayles latest film to reach these shores. In the US it was released in the run up to last year’s presidential election, since it addresses State politics.
Included in the cast are some of Sayles favourite actors. Chris Cooper plays would-be Governor Dickie Pilager, who should in no way be confused with a certain ex-Governor on Texas who went on to bigger things. While Kris Kristofferson has a fleeting role as the local big-business guy.
But we spend most of our time in the company Danny (Danny Huston), once a journalist for the local paper, at a time when it did actually investigate things, but stitched up. Now he’s an investigator for a small town firm, who’s embroiled in a case that Cooper’s right hand man (a great Richard Dreyfuss role) has him look into when a photo-opportunity at a lakeside ends up with a dead body being reeled in by the governor-to-be.
The film gets into the dirty business of American politics and it’s spider-like links with local business interests. We also have pictures painted of the dubious employment practices with the trade in illegal immigrants from Mexico being used in the fields, factories and swish Colarado skiing communities.
As usual, Sayles has found an interesting location in the States and taken a close look at how things work there. It all feels very real, with naturalistic performances and a pace and plot that doesn’t feel too rushed.
Michael Murphy has a cameo as Cooper’s father, a Senator. Obviously this is supposed to be a political family, and again, I’m sure no direct links should be made!
Daryl Hannah has a fabulous little role as the black sheep of Cooper’s family, and Tim Roth plays a grungy ex-editor who now runs a counter-culture website from where you can really learn what’s going on while big-media plays it safe and gets sucked into large corporate ownership. Billy Zane’s sleazy PR guy is great too – he once appeared on television explaining the Big Tobacco position that smoking does not cause cancer.
Maybe the end is a touch laboured, but the points are all well made. Sayles just can’t actually make a bad film. Well he might act as script doctor on some pieces of work that end up as bad films, but that’s not really his fault, and they obviously pay the bills and let him do things like this.
And I haven’t mentioned that the film has a soundtrack to kill for. Well any film that has three different Cowboys Junkies tracks in it is going to get a big thumbs up from me to begin with. They’re all taken from The Trinity Session, and we get Mining For Gold over the opening titles before later hearing Misguided Angel and Blue Moon Revisited. But there’s plenty of other stuff including Lucinda Williams and a great track from Steve Earle over the end credits – Amerika v 6.0. The crying shame is that there doens’t seem to be a proper soundtrack album available. I suppose that the film’s too small a proposition to worry about such things. It looks as though I’ll have to put my own compilation together using the handy music listings from IMDB.