Gee. A movie about sex at the topmost levels of the US government. Ho, hum. But wait -- this time it's a woman who's alleged to have done the deed! Let's all trot out our prurient interests and salivate all over the remote!

Nahhh, let's not. Let's just admire the way a pair of gifted actors have separated the wheat from the chaff. The script gave 'em lemons, and Joan Allen and Gary Oldham made lemonade. Darned good lemonade, at that.


The Plot Thins

The Vice President of the US has kicked the bucket, expired, passed on, gone to that great place in the sky where all the other people whose names no one remembers have gone. President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) gets to name a new one; the House of representatives gets to confirm him. But wait!!! the nominee is a her!!!

Oh, yeah, there was a darned good male candidate -- a bona fide hero -- but Evans wants a legacy, a legacy of giving America the first female vice president. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... Laine Hanson! And oh! what a woman she is -- Senator from Ohio, foxy blonde mama, smart, willowy, Democrat daughter of a Republican governor, slinky sexy sweetie...

But wait! ever since she jumped parties, the House Republicans have plotted revenge, and they're out to get it right now. The chairman of the House Confirmation Committee, Sheldon Runyon (Gary Oldman) will let nothing stand in his way when it comes to making certain that Laine Hanson not only does not get confirmed, but her career, marriage, and life are in a shambles when it's all over.

His most puissant ammunition in the move to block confirmation? a decades old rumor that Laine Hanson "pulled a train" as part of her sorority initiation, complete with a video of a faceless, naked blonde performing a sex act with an equally faceless male. His weapons? the standard stuff of intrigue inside the DC Beltway: innuendo, leaks, anonymous memos, accusations, and all the rest.

Hanson's defense? Simple: she refuses to discuss the accusations at all.


Why Now?

Well, as we all know, Hollywood is riddled with people of a nasty liberal bent (Heston, Reagan, Grandy, Swartzenegger, etc., notwithstanding) -- and they were mightily peeved at the House Managers' performance during the Clinton impeachment hearings (so was I, but I just voted against the local guy when he ran for re-election). Seizing the bully pulpit, director/screenwriter Rod Lurie took it upon himself to make an extremely gray issue completely black and white. Lurie just did exactly what Rush Limbaugh does every day, he just reversed Limbaugh's sense of black and white.

Oldman's Shelly Runyon -- looking remarkably like Michael Jeter's character in the sitcom "Evening Shade" -- is written as spiteful, hateful, hypocritical, backbiting, sneaky, underhanded... The quintessence of a Republican (for example, Asa Hutchinson) seen through partisan eyes. Allen's Laine Hanson is cultured, cool, calm, collected, and principled -- but essentially human, just as those same partisans saw Bill Clinton. We know she's human, because the very first time we meet her, she's on her back in her Senate office with her legs wrapped around husband's back (at least it's her husband!).

Simply put, "The Contender" is little more than 100+ minutes of issue ad, with actors who are far more polished than the usual talking heads we see lying through their teeth during election season. The villain -- and it's pretty clear who is the villain in this piece -- is portrayed as an amoral man with a public veneer of mighty moral character; something that (in my humble opinion) can be equally assigned to either side of the aisle in my nation's government.


Morality Play

On the other hand, Lurie has broached a serious question about national politics. How much of a candidate's past is anyone's business? It's interesting to note that the sitting President of the US took a note from Laine Hanson when he refused to answer questions about his youth. It's also interesting to note that the same people who clamored for more, more, more! information about the Clinton scandals were piously silent about Bush's dissembling... One would hope that all partisans realize that enough is enough and move on.


Performance above and beyond the call of scripting

Allen and Oldman both deliver masterful performances. Laine Hanson's calm demeanor (almost) never cracks; she delivers her answers to her confirmation committee with far more respect than they seen to deserve. Oldman sits up there on his bench and continually delivers lines like "I know you'll want to respond to these unwarranted accusations [which my committee leaked just this morning]..." with a straight face -- which also takes a masterful acting job.

Bridges, as president, delivers the obligatory POTUS speech with far more aplomb than any real-life politician (I exclude Reagan here, 'cause he was acting the whole time) has shown anytime in the last two generations. It's a good performance, but an empty and hollow speech. It's obviously the speech Lurie wished Clinton could have made, and Bridges did it justice.


Did you honestly think that film really was Laine Hanson

We saw Joan Allen running in a tight tee shirt several times in the movie. The least the production crew could have done was fins a video of a less, err... well-endowed blonde on her hands and knees for the "evidence" of Laine's college-era transgressions.


All in All

A boring, predictable script that was interesting to me only because it pushed the right political buttons. Conservatives, on the other hand, will mostly hate this movie for being far too liberal. Since it's pandering and derivative, the only things it has going for it are the performances by Allen and Oldman. And on that basis alone, It's worth a watch.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older