Droning instruction in politics, economics, and sociology from the liberal slant of John Sayles. (The liberalism is irreproachable: the cast is listed alphabetically, the photographer is Haskell Wexler.) You would like to think that in his fifteenth feature film, you could expect a certain level of professionalism and finesse in Sayles's writing and directing. What you can actually detect is a drop: in addition to his usual stagy dialogue, a raw and ruddy digital-video image, a dead-air soundtrack, and a strictly amateur central performance (as you would never guess from the alphabetical list) by Danny Huston, producing faint echoes of his father John, as a private investigator embroiled in the Colorado gubernatorial race. The leading candidate — son of a U.S. Senator, putty in the hands of Big Business, slave to his Spiritual Advisor — bears an unaccidental resemblance to George W. Bush ("He's a fuckin' disaster when he's off the script"), and Chris Cooper has some fun — our only fun — mimicking the Commander-in-Chief's halting, faltering, what's-my-line inarticulacy. With Maria Bello, Richard Dreyfuss, Daryl Hannah, Tim Roth, Kris Kristofferson. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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