Multicharacter fictionalization of Eric Schlosser's nonfiction exposé of the same name. With it, director Richard Linklater picks up a placard and joins the radical parade of American fictioneers from Frank Norris and Upton Sinclair and Jack London and John Steinbeck and on down. The major issues, too many to fit on one placard, are corporate corner-cutting and penny-pinching, the exploitation of undocumented workers, the brand-naming of America, the brainwashing of its citizens, and the like. Undisguisedly didactic in intent, often clunky and chunky in dialogue ("Right now I can't think of anything more patriotic than violating the Patriot Act"), it is surprisingly watchable, with its large assemblage of life-sized characters (Ashley Johnson, special mention, as a perky fast-food clerk with incipient scruples) and its smooth-flowing narrative, following two principal paths to its central arena of Cody, Colorado: the investigation by a Mickey's marketer (Greg Kinnear) into allegations of elevated fecal content in their Big One burger ("There's shit in the meat.... This could be a problem for us") and the importation of Mexican laborers (Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancón) to staff the Uni-Globe Meat Packing plant. The first path, though, trails off long before the finish, yielding to a new and unavailing path of local consciousness-raising. And the rhetorical climax on "the kill floor" is, from any angle, overkill. Particularly from the vegetarian angle. Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, Bobby Canavale, Paul Dano, Esai Morales. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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