The Contender

Rod Lurie, the film critic turned film director, has pumped out two political thrillers in the past year. While having never seen Deterrence, I've heard it was tightly constructed and had good performances from its leads. The same goes for The Contender. Lurie wraps the screenplay into a tightly woven political examination. The film is especially pertinent given the fact that it is an election year, and is released shortly after the biggest sex scandal in American history.

Its a decidedly liberal film. The good guys are Democrats, the bad guys are Republicans. It's not bi-partisan by any means. Lurie almost makes it seem as if he's campaigning himself. Who's to know for sure? Maybe he does have the presidency on his mind for the future. He wrote the script himself; this is entirely his film. He's behind all the meaning and the political intentions for it.

Lurie gets great performances out of his cast. Joan Allen plays Laine Hansen, the senator who is named the vice president-elect by President Evans (Bridges). Before she can assume the lofty position, she must go through a hearing process to determine if she's fit for the job. Governing these proceedings in Repuiblican Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman). He decides to make the process a tough one for Hansen. Not only does he not like her or think that she's a good politician, he thinks that she's not the right woman to first take such a place of power. Helping Runyon on the hearing board is Reginald Webster (Christian Slater), and he also has decided to make the trip as rocky as possible. In their hearing, they bring to light past sexual circumstances from her college days. Just a mention of such things drives the media into a frenzy, and within hours of the revealing stations across the country are going ballistic digging up information. Laine Hansen is being crucified as a politician and a person.

The script is full of interesting quirks, the most entertaining being the constant back and forth banter between President Evans and his head chef in the kitchen. Such cleverness is abound in the film.

Yet, there was always a sense of something missing. It certainly wasn't witty dialogue or strong performances. Everybody is great, especially the villainous Gary Oldman. It had to be tension. I expected the proceedings to be more tense than they were. It's clear that it was intended to be a suspenseful political thriller. It just turned out to be a political film. The movie moves along briskly enough to allow for tension to develop but for some reason it never really does. Perhaps a reason for this is the uninteresting score by Larry Groupe. His score is especially intruding in the climactic speech. If not for the intrusive score it would have been a genuinely affecting piece. Instead, it only rang in as being cheesy and overly dramatic.

I got the sense that while The Contender is good, it became awfully close to being great. If little things were done differently or with more care it could have risen to a higher level. Even without being a really great film, The Contender is taut movie making and definitely worth your time.

On a scale of 1 to 10 frisky fraternities : 7