Sunday, May 9, 2010
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
Sunday, May 9, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Casino Jack And The United States Of Money
A Jack Of All Con Men In
Political Rouletteville, D.C.
Convicted felon Jack Abramoff, the subject of Alex Gibney's latest documentary,
"Casino Jack: The United States Of Money".
Corbis
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Sunday, May 9, 2010
"Casino Jack" does what few documentaries do well these days: tell a story
utilizing dense information while non-equivocating with and entertaining its
audience. Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney ("Taxi To The Dark Side")
navigates us through a harrowing journey into the criminal misadventures and
rapaciousness of one convicted felon Jack Abramoff, who probably hasn't seen
"Casino Jack" because he's currently serving a four-year prison sentence for
bribery and corruption. (He probably doesn't want to see the film.
After all, he knows the story well.)
Told with voluminous depth and the help of two actors (Stanley Tucci and Paul
Rudd), Mr. Gibney assembles interviews of major players in the K Street bribery
scheme, including Bob Ney, former Republican congressman of Ohio, and a
convicted felon. The film is a fascinating and disturbing probe into the
depths of the selfish, malevolent and arrogant id, and its need to be fed so
unabashedly. Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyist, pulled the strings of so
many politicos that he had them eating out of his hands, and voraciously.
One of the most shocking things in the documentary -- so shocking that it's even
uncomfortably funny -- is the torrent of actual e-mails from Mr. Abramoff and
Michael Scanlon, his right-hand partner-in-cronyism. The blatant fleecing
of numerous Native American casino groups is the highlight (or lowlight) of the
brazen venality on display in these communications, and their amazing
recklessness. The lack of opaqueness in these electronic conversations is
stunning, stupefying and above all, absolutely pathetic.
As with Mr. Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room", "Casino Jack" yanks
the rug out from under the emperors of corporate thievery and muddies the
shark-infested waters surrounding them with one or two figures who are arguably
sympathetic for entirely credible reasons. The secondary figures get
caught up in the criminal conduct either naively, knowingly, unwittingly, or all
three.
Mr. Gibney also employs music as a leavening anchor and buttress against the
wicked swindles he documents. The music -- sometimes funny, other times a
satirical device or character anthem -- punctuates the compelling, artful
visuals before us. Ella Fitzgerald, like Billie Holliday in "Enron", has
never been heard in the context you hear her here.
Alex Gibney, who has become a highly-proficient psychological profiler of
creatures of power on film, has set himself apart from many American
documentarians by reverting to old-fashioned investigative journalism and a
direct approach. He clinically dissects the aphrodisiacs and avarices of
people in power while revealing their fatal flaws and weaknesses on the scale of
Greek tragedy theater. Mr. Gibney needn't pile on -- and he doesn't -- the
bad guys have more than enough rope with which to hang themselves.
"Casino Jack And The United States Of Money" is rated R for
language by the Motion Picture
Association Of America. The film's duration is two hours and two minutes.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPCORN REEL MOVIE
REVIEWS RSS FEED
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME