Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

What stimulated me to catch up with one of the John Sayles movies I'd missed, the 2004 "Silver City," is that it was shot by legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler. In his son Mark's resentful documentary, "Tell Them Who You Are," HW is selling his camera equipment and seems unlikely to be employed again as a director of photography. Wexler sought the critically acclaimed "Matewan" for John Sayles, and Sayles speaks admiringly of HW in "Tell Them" -- and hired HW again to shoot "Silver City."

Filmed around Colorado (Denver, Idaho Springs, Leadville, Sedalia), the visuals are excellent. The opening and closing scenes of gubernatorial candidate Richard ("Dim Dickie") Pilager especially have a Wexler look. (And the symmetry of unwelcome risings to the surface...)

As "Dim Dickie," Chris Cooper has the insouciance and incoherence of George W. Bush. In a constant losing battle with the English language, je emits a hebephrenia of right-wing buzzwords and has a "business" history of falling upward (his failed ventures being purchased by rich friends of the family) just like that of the president of these United States. His father, Senator Judson Pilager (Michael Murphy with the resonances of the presidential campaign of "Tanner 88" that seemed modeled on a Colorado senator) is far more knowledgeable -- which should make him more culpable IMO for his alliance with the nefarious Wes Bentel (Kris Kristoferson), the real owner of the state. Bentel's multiple businesses employ large numbers of undocumented aliens who are too frightened of "la Migra" to complain about dangerous working conditions.

Bentel and the politicians he owns (the Pilagers) advocate smaller government, total freedom from regulation for corporations, and untrammeled access to public land. Are they caricatures? The rhetoric about "freedom" that means freedom of corporations from regulations along with eager trampling of individual rights and embrace of surveillance is not a caricature, but the theory and practice of the part of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and McCain. The puzzlement in me is that anyone believes they are advancing "freedom," but there are more than enough targets in the movie without my going off to editorialize here.

John Sayles strikes me as a more political Robert Altman, deploying casts with a lot of star power, many plot lines, and even overlapping sound and dialogue. Corruption is Sayles's recurrent theme in such films as "Eight Men Out," "City of Hope," and "Lone Star" (my three favorites). The bad guys prevail rather than being punished in Sayles's movies. Those who attempt to oppose official corruption may survive but do not prevail -- as they do in most Hollywood fantasies. I think that this refusal to show the opponents of evil triumphing limits the popularity of Salyes's movies.

The protagonist of "Silver City" is an investigative reporter Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston who recently portrayed Samuel Adams in "John Adams," was the husband who dies in "21 Grams," and is the son of the villain of "Chinatown," director John Huston). Before the start of the movie, Danny was set up by a slumlord operation He now works for a detective agency run by Grace Seymour (a weary and rather entertaining Mary Kay Place). The Pilager Turdblossom, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss as a more sympathetic Karl Rove but with some baggage that will be familiar to those who know the saga of Rove and the Bush dynasty) wants three individuals who he thinks might have something to do with the Mexican corpse snagged by his candidate (with a garish red lure that is supposed to get the "big ones") during a photo shoot near the abandoned Bentel slag heap that Grace's husband Mort (David Clennon) is trying to turn into a retirement community.

The plot is very complicated and even Danny trying to draw the network on his living-room wall does not make it easy to follow. Let me simplify matters by observing that there are too many layers of eager malefactors for Danny to connect Bentel directly with any of the crimes from which he profits. People get hurt or killed, but Bentel does not have to fly down from his mountain eyrie to do anything ciminal himself.

Danny does not give up easily. He and the Chicano chef he deputizes, Tony Guerra (an engaging, witty Sal Lopez) nearly die for "nosing around." Danny's ex . Nora (Maria Bello, also engaging and more wistful than witty, though somewhat witty) is still a reporter and one who attempts to ask tough questions of the governor-select. The solution for that is for Bentel to buy the paper that employs her. So it goes.

There are some standout performances. Cooper manages Dubya's incoherence amazingly well, though not having the full Dubya smirk. Richard Dreyfuss is restrained herein and makes his Karl Rove character almost sympathetic (having to market such shoddy goods as "Dim Dicky"). Daryl Hannah has a very flamboyant part as Maddy Pilager (the black sheep of the family). Kris Kristoferson has a great speech on advertising. Billy Zane is quite good as a cynical operator (even mroe cynical than Raven/Rove!). I thought that James Gammon (who will always be the crusty father of Nash Bridges for me) was good as the practical-minded sheriff, Denis Berkfeldt as the Christian Right's "Reverend" Tubbs. I've already mentioned Sal Lopez and Maria Bello making positive impressions. Michael Murphy, Mary Kay Place, Tim Roth, and Thora Birch had little screen time. Murphy and Place made theirs count. The same could be said for Luis Saguar as the coyote in ostrich-skin boots Vince Esparza. And Stephen Brackett (as Madge's son, Dewey Junior) registers in a scene in which he seeks advice about finding his father from Danny.

I don't think that Sayles was aiming to make a conventional thriller. The plot makes "The Big Sleep" (heretofore one of the most confusing detective movies ever made) look simplistic. Danny Huston does not have the charisma of Humphrey Bogart or Jack Nicholson--"Silver City" has some resonances from the aforementioned "Chinatown" in regard to water politics, but "Chinatown" is more about sexual transgressions than the use of government to profit individual villains. The same could be said of Altman's "The Long Goodbye" with its anti-charismatic Marlowe as played by Elliot Gould." (Again, in comparison, evil is punished in "The Long Goodbye," whereas it is not even touched by Danny's investigatory gloves in "Silver City".)

Silver City" is much more political satire than "Chinatown" was. On the other hand, it does not go for laughs as "Wag the Dog" does. The only character who seems exaggerated herein is Maddy Pilager. (The results are too entertaining for me to object!) Chuck Raven is less vicious than his real-life model... and "Dim Dicky" comes across as less dangerous than his. And I am all too mindful that a large number of the minority of Americans who vote discounted the well-documented misrule in general and environmental degradation in particular sponsored by the prototype model of "Dim Dicky."

© 2008, Stephen O. Murray




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD