Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges, Gary Oldman, William Petersen, Sam Elliott. Dir. Rod Lurie, Dreamworks, 2000
If my tendency to overshare has not made it clear, let us establish that yours truly has yet to entirely grow up. I'd love to say that explains my boyish charm, but it also explains my galloping naivete and my stubborn resistance to common sense. I hold onto things. Memories, people, ideas.
My childhood belief in these persisted well past the point where a little skepticism would have been no bad thing. The last few years ended most of my willful naivete, my childish idealism. Unfortunately, the Current Guy, while tonally a galaxy away from the Former Guy, has not so far restored my faith in the civics-class ideals to which I clung. The Former Guy sinned by doing. The Current sins by not doing. Neither has helped stop my reluctant emergence into how shit really is.
All of which is to say I found myself choked up at a couple points in Rod Lurie's 2000 political thriller, THE CONTENDER, and at the end, as Jeff Bridges thundered away at Congress, I brimmed over into tears. Not so much for the ideals espoused, though an anti-slutshaming movie's ideals are mine, but because most of Bridges' high minded rhetoric about how women will be honored, will serve at the highest level of the executive branch, will not be slutshamed and character assassinated out of existence, and of the kind of nation which will make those things real, the kind of decent and fair-minded nation we can be, didn't happen (apart from Kamala Harris.) Listening to this rousing speech, I thought of how righteous that sounded in 2000, and how the country Bridges describes looked within reach.
Then, I thought about W, and Bush v. Gore, and 9/11, and USA PATRIOT, and 20 years of war on two fronts which turned out a master class in futility. I thought about the Former Guy, and Justice Kavanaugh, and #MeToo & #TimesUp, and how very fucking far we live from the ideals of Hollywood's idea of politics/politicians ca. 2000. So I teared up and a minutes' worth spilled over for a world and a time I believed in, however childishly, as opposed to this world, in which I live with as little belief as possible.
The liberal vs. conservative politics in THE CONTENDER haven't changed so much as metastasized, in both parties' case. Many who watch it today may struggle with Clintonian liberalism even moreso than the Gingrich playbook run by Gary Oldman's Republicans. I don't know what some contemporary viewers make out of the political ideals espoused by Democrats in this movie. Some audiences may not find THE CONTENDER as moving, ideologically, as I do.
What they'll find, instead, is a great movie. Released in an election year, many of these characters and situations were assumed to be based or modeled on then-current political figures and events. Most of them belong to the scrapheap of history, today, but political ideology and partisanship only hinder the appreciation of a first class political thriller. I found my and the film's politics irrelevant early in the proceedings and that didn't change.
The story tells a tale of machination, ambition, fanaticism. The movie concerns itself with strategy, tactics, how the sausage is made. The parties and platforms, while crucial to the characters, don't contribute or detract from Rod Lurie's story about political manouvering. THE CONTENDER, which houses a police procedural subplot, works like a procedural set in the world of DC. Characters' individual beliefs don't make much difference. What they believe, and THAT they believe, particularly in themselves, makes all the difference.
Joan Allen plays Sen. Laine Hansen, an Ohio Democrat nominated to the Vice Presidency following the death of the sitting Veep, by President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges.) The death of a sitting VP means invocation of the 25th Amendment, allowing the House Judiciary Committee, headed by Rep. Shelley Runyon (Gary Oldman) the right of advise&consent in the President's choice for replacement.
When Bridges finds the heir-apparent's act of heroism problematic, passing over Virginia Governor Jack Hathaway in favor of Hansen, his choice provokes the ire of Rep. Sheldon Runyon, head of the House Judiciary Committee, who vows not simply to block the nomination but to ruin Hansen in politics. Photos surface of a young woman, alleged to be Hansen, participating in a fraternity gangbang. Annnnnnnd...go.
I like everyone in this cast going in. Coming out, I like them at least as much and, in one case, more. Shaving his moustache may be the smartest acting choice Sam Elliott, a smart actor, ever made. The Perpetual Cowboy/Cop/Biker disappears and an aging, courtly, ferocious Chief of Staff takes his place. To me, Elliott's turn rivals Travolta's in PULP FICTION, not in size but in revitalizing his career by being exactly who he has been in his other roles, only a little different. Just the absence of facial hair changes perception of the parts Elliott can play.
Joan Allen is old. It's terrible to say, but I don't see Joan Allen heading up bigtime studio-movie cast lists these days, and I do not because Allen's too old, by Hollywood logic, to be a leading lady. If she makes it another few years, she'll qualify to play spooky and/or sentimental matriarchs for awhile, but our time to savor the great actor Allen is has mostly passed, and more's the pity. She picked good projects. Her movies tend to stand up over a couple decades. As a strong woman villified for that strength, for being confident and assured and opinionated, resented for being too masuline yet hated for not being male, Allen gets it right. She's resolute, but violated. Her dignity is taken from her, her right to have it disregarded by the demands of more powerful mens' agendas. Some performers might see an opportunity in Laine Hansen to do some of the thundering Bridges and Oldman air, but Allen's not one of those. Her refusal to engage in histrionics and melodrama allow her to be more present, the calm center of the political circus. Allen at her best plays understated, strong women, without being a martyr or another stereotype. Watching her accounts for much of the pleasure in watching THE CONTENDER.
Watching Oldman and Bridges work accounts for the rest. Christian Slater has a nice turn as a politically ambitious freshman congressman, Saul Rubinek and Philip Baker Hall do their usual solid character work, COLD CASE's Kathryn Morris is fun as a gregarious FBI agent, and Mike Binder, who went on to direct Allen in THE UPSIDE OF ANGER, plays a sleazy political operative with the same authenticity he played a sleazy radio exec in the latter, but Oldman plays a villainous congressman with relish and baleful glee, as opposed to the increasingly pro forma villains he spent the '90s playing. I often hear Oldman's resurgence pinpointed to 2004's BATMAN BEGINS, but here he is in 2000, having at it.
Which leaves Bridges. Like others, I grew up watching Bridges in countless movies - KING KONG, THUNDERBOLT&LIGHTFOOT, TRON, STARMAN, THE FISHER KING, WHITE SQUALL, THE BIG LEBOWSKI - yet never understood him as a national goddamn treasure until TRUE GRIT and CRAZYHEART and HELL OR HIGH WATER made it undeniable. If I missed the overall excellence as I saw those movies, it is the greatest of pleasures now to revisit them and see what I ought to have then. His President Evans reminds me of Jeff Bridges, Interview Subject. Bridges has this ability to be warm and engaged and welcoming in his interviews even as he tells reporters exactly what he wants them to hear. He's interesting yet never revelatory. That's Evans's style. I don't know whose idea it was to make Evans drunk on his ability to order any food he wants at anytime, but it's a wonderful, repeated bit of business, particularly when he invites Slater's trecherous congressman to share a shark-steak sandwich.
I tweeted the four movies I "proposed" to watch yesterday and I'm glad I said it that way. I intended to at least watch RED and THE CONTENDER and write both up together, but that isn't happening because, a.I didn't put on THE CONTENDER until 3:30 this morning, and b.RED and THE CONTENDER share nothing in common except my odd belief they're both political thrillers. RED's a comic book-derived movie, and not terrible, but it belongs in another writeup. It would be a terrible combination. RED's pleasures are not those of THE CONTENDER. If they both concern Washington-inspired chicanery, one's Washington springs from the pages of a comic book. It's not the Washington of THE CONTENDER. At all.
I did decide to write only about THE CONTENDER, however. That was a good decision. THE CONTENDER appears to pit Democrats against Republicans, but Oldman's Sheldon Runyon quotes military philosopher Clausewitsz, saying Hansen will be obliterated but a greater good will be served. It is those politics, the politics of smearing and ruining women over sexual hypocrisies, the politics of turning governance into a contest of will and ego, the politics of character assassination for personal power, which concern Lurie and his story. The Rs and Ds serve as pegs for characters to hang their ideological hats, not as theme or plot.
Watching THE CONTENDER was harder than I expected. We're not living in the world it wanted to see. That may be for the best, and it is what it is, regardless, but that world sounded good to me in 2000, and the one we've wound up with is not any kind of improvement. That doesn't mean I didn't love it or that it's a bad film. I did and it isn't. It just means I'm a sentimental idiot.
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