_Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal_ by Eric Schlosser was a book of expansive scope. Its author sought to explain not only how the fast food industry helped to transform the American diet, but also our landscape, economy, workforce, and popular culture. The book seemed ideal for a Michael Moore style documentary expose, but director Richard Linklater, who was given the task of adapting it to film, opted instead to create a fictionalized film based on some of the premises of the book. The result is a ponderous mess that threatened to collapse under its own pretensions at any minute but still managed to convey its main points.
The film follows three storylines that are tenuously intertwined. The first one involved a marketing executive (Greg Kinnear) of a fictional fast food chain called Mickey's who came to a small town in Colorado investigate why fecal matters was found in the meat produced in a local slaughterhouse. The second story was about a family of illegal immigrants (Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancón, and Juan Carlos Serrán) who work at the plant. The third one followed high school student Amber (Ashley Johnson) and her friends who work at the local branch of Mickey's. These stories together are supposed to represent the major facets of the fast food industry: meat production, corporate management, and product distribution.

The first storyline covers the theme of corporate greed. During his investigation, Kinnear's character interviewed representatives from different sectors involved in fast food production. He talked to the meat packing plant's manager who did their best to portray meat production as an efficient, clean, and modern industry, to a local rancher whose kind was being squeezed out by large agribusiness, and to the meat packing plant's CEO (Bruce Willis) who admitted that there are lots of ways for fecal matters to get on the meat, but that's fine as long as you cook the meat. Some of the best sequences of the film took place in this storyline. The one that stood out for me was when the rancher played by Kris Kristfferson gave a speech that summed up the thesis of the film rather eloquently: "This isn't about good people versus bad people. This is about the machine that's taking over this country. It's like something out of science fiction. The land, the cattle, human beings, this machine doesn't give a sh*t. Pennies a pound, pennies a pound, that's all it cares about."

The immigrant storyline did an adequate job getting its point across. The film showed how life was difficult for this group of Mexican immigrants. First, they had to make a dangerous trek through the desert to cross the border, and then they're intimidated by armed human smugglers on the way to Colorado, and when they finally arrived at the meat packing plant they have to work in hellish conditions where human limb and life mattered less than keeping up the pace at the line. Even though most of them find their job horrifying and disgusting, they would gather use drugs to help them get through the day than to find another job because they're being paid much more than what they can get in Mexico.

The third storyline about a group of teenagers who work at the fast food restaurant is the least satisfying. The main character of this storyline, Amber, was an academically bright high school student who's raised by a single mother. A visit by her socially conscious uncle (Ethan Hawke) prompted her to question the morality of working for a fast food giant which resulted in her quitting her job and joining a group of activists. Linklater touched on many topics here; rural poverty, corporate takeover of the main streets of small town America, animal cruelty, environmental degradation, and even crime, but the impact of the lessons was diminished by the way they were framed. For example, it was suggested in one scene that the security cameras installed in the fast food restaurants were used to monitor the employees, not to keep them safe. However, the impact of this realization was considerably lessened by having the conversation take place in the context of a gripe session between bored teenaged employees.

Despite its shortcomings, "Fast Food Nation" is still expansive enough to provide a good overview of the fast food industry, and convincing enough in its human interest stories to show us the human cost of cheap hamburgers. Anyone who wants to be fully responsible with the choices they make in life owe it to themselves to see this film.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older