Film Review: The Contender

 "The Contender"

*** (out of ****)

One of the reasons I was excited about dubbing this year, "Was I Right?" - a year long re-examination of my previous individual Top Ten choices throughout the years - is that it would allow me to revisit movies like "The Contender" (2000), which I haven't   watched since it was released in theaters.

When I initially saw "The Contender" I eagerly declared it one of the year's best movies - placing it in the number two spot behind "Gladiator" (2000) - and felt the movie was highlighted by a knockout performance from Joan Allen.  Allen, I believed, would be Julia Roberts' - appearing in "Erin Brockovich" (2000) - only competition for the Best  Actress  Academy  Award that year.

In anticipation of this review I watched "The Contender" three times. Something wasn't sitting well with me. To answer the question of was I right about the movie, the short answer is no. But why wasn't I enjoying the movie? What was preventing me? The obvious answer was politics.

"The Contender", directed by movie critic turned filmmaker, Rod Lurie, may want to transport us back to American cinema of the 1960s and '70s to political movies such as "All the President's Men" (1976), "The Candidate" (1972), "Advise and Consent" (1962), and "3 Days of the Condor" (1975) but it can't match those movies despite its best intentions. One of the problems is Lurie is too heavy handed in his political messaging. The movie's techniques would actually play well today as  American "artists" are too often creating political creeds instead of focusing on good storytelling. The "mission" of a movie like "The Contender" is not so much to entertain us as it is to persuade us. It feels as if Lurie wasn't concerned with artistic merit but rather concocting left-wing propaganda. The message overwhelms the movie and quite frankly tested my patience. 

Released two years after the political spectacle of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's impeachment, "The Contender" was meant to be a rebuttal with an identity politics twist. This time it would be a female Democratic senator caught in the middle of a sex scandal. With the political air being what it was in 2000, the "good" Democrat position at the time was to stand behind Clinton and rinse, wash, and repeat their talking point, it wasn't about lying, it was about sex. Although I was 17 when "The Contender" was released, I grew up in what could be described as a working-class Democratic household. I heard my parents and grandparents argue with the TV and profess Clinton's innocence against a "vast right-wing conspiracy". Growing up in such a household, my family's politics rubbed off on me. Watching a movie like "The Contender" back in 2000 was like singing to the choir. Of course I ate up Rod Lurie's defense of Clinton and his attacks on Republican politicians. It's not that my personal politics have necessarily changed but "The Contender" hasn't aged well as the political Left has moved away from the Liberal Ideals offered in this movie. I have also come to resent cheapening the artistic artform of cinema as a tool for political propaganda. 

While there is no way Lurie or the country could have possibly known what would come in the years ahead, "The Contender" was almost a warning of the circus freak show American politics has become today thanks to ring leaders like Donald Trump. At the end of  "The Contender", Jeff Bridges as President Jackson Evans gives a self-righteous, moral grandstanding speech, admonishing members of Congress stating the level of hate has risen to such a degree that we can not distinguish between demagogue and the truly inspired. I don't know if Lurie had Huey Long in mind when he wrote that speech or Newt Gingrich but it sure as heck describes charlatans like Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Barack Obama. 

The movie was also prophetical in it's left-wing identity politics with its basic premise of Senator Laine Hanson (Allen) being the president's choice for VP after the previous Vice-President died three weeks ago. President Evans wants to have the legacy of nominating the first female as VP. It may be his last major decision. Fast forward to 2020 and then candidate Joe Biden made a promise to pick a woman as his running mate. Two years later, now President Biden went a step further and promised to select a black woman as his choice for Supreme Court judge.

It is this blatant kowtowing to identity politics that Illinois Republican Congressmen Sheldon Runyon (Gary Oldman) rejects. However, the movie also hints that his real motivation may be sexism. In a very powerful scene Hanson meets with Runyon as he lays all of his cards on the table and reveals he finds Hanson's selfishness detestable. He claims Hanson wants to take on a job that positions her to assume gigantic responsibility knowing full well she is not ready. It probably wasn't the movie's intention but I cheered such a declaration. If that is what selfishness is, it describes practically every individual that runs for office or currently serves. Imagine, I thought, if we as a society held candidates to such a standard. Runyon goes on to suggest Hanson lacks the promise of greatness.

As the word greatness lingers in the air the very next scene has a young Democratic Representative, Webster (Christian Slater) in the White House, staring at Presidential portraits. "Patriotic" music swells in the background, implying these men represent the "greatness" Runyon spoke of. Webster has been causing problems for the President and Sen. Hanson. He refuses to be a yes man and support Hanson's nomination, joining forces with Runyon on the confirmation committee. The President has invited Webster to the White House for a "meeting". Webster is making a mess, the President lectures, of his plans for confirmation. The President would like Webster to "lay off. As a personal favor". A conversation begins about Webster's age with the implication Webster is a young man following his heart. "I envy you" says the President as he explains because one day Webster will be with his family in the White House, staring at a portrait of President Evans. Webster will be able to tell his children way back then he defied his president even though it cost him his reelection and any chance he had at making a difference in the country. It sounds like the kind of thing you would hear in a 1940s movie with a gangster character telling a store owner that won't pay up, "it would be an awful thing if something should happen to you."

That sentiment is also at the heart of Lurie's movie. Webster is young and naïve. He lacks the wisdom that comes with age and the understanding if you want to succeed in politics you must acquiesce to your party's demands. Politics is about incremental change. That was a song voters heard Democrats sings in 2016 and 2020 as they were told Sen. Bernie Sander's vision was a "pipe dream". What is so telling about Lurie's position is we have two characters claiming to stand on principles - Webster and Hanson - and yet the movie determines only one of them has "correct" principles and, spoiler alert, it isn't the young optimist. The idealists must "gain the wisdom" to come around and accept their place. Was this Lurie's way of shaming Democrat voters that didn't stand by Clinton or might contemplate voting for George W. Bush, who promised to restore honor and dignity to the White House?

In order to take down Sen. Hanson, Runyon and his minions investigate Hanson's past believing information has turned up that will embarrass Hanson, leading her to officially withdraw her nomination. When Hanson was in college, in order to enter a sorority, she allegedly participated in a gang-bang. Masquerading moral outrage, Runyon rebukes an on-line article on the incident during the committee hearing. In the name of fairness he allows Hanson the opportunity to denounce the article as well. She however doesn't take the bait. Her position is it is beneath her to comment on such a thing. It is no ones business if the story is true or false. 

It is around this point in "The Contender" I began to roll my eyes. I couldn't take the moral superiority message Lurie keeps hammering us with. If Lurie wanted his story to be another "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1939) he failed miserably because he doesn't understand Capra's genius. "Mr. Smith" was also about a man with principles and it had a dark side but Capra made us feel good not only about ourselves but America too. He gave us something universal to believe in. "The Contender" is too partisan. It wants to be a "feel good" movie but because of its divisive characters and message it can never pull off such a feat. Take for example a scene where Hanson gives a speech during the committee hearing. It comes near the end of the movie as Hanson has been lectured by the President that now is the time to fight back against Runyon. Her speech is a laundry list of Democratic policies that she believes in. That same cornball "patriotic" music swells to a fever pitch as she speaks. Clearly the movie endorses these policies and the music is suppose to make the viewer support these ideas too. Why should we support them? Because dang it, they are American ideas! But it is just your standard list of Democrat ideas on issues like gun control and abortion. How is that going to bring an audience together and make us proud to be Americans? Capra wouldn't do that.

By and large "The Contender" is only playing to Democrat voters. In Stephen Holden's New York Times review he summed it up like this, ""The Contender" makes no bones about where its political sympathies lie. It is essentially a pro-Clinton editorial in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal and an angry brief against what it calls "sexual McCarthyism" and the dragging of private consensual sex into the public arena.". And even after acknowledging such, Holden still recommended the movie. Richard Roeper, by then the new official replacement of Gene Siskel, listed "The Contender" among his favorite movies of 2000, in the number four spot. Roger Ebert awarded the movie four stars in his Chicago Sun-Times  review and wrote "Whether you are in sympathy with the movie may depend on which you found more disturbing: The questions of the Starr commission, or Clinton's attempts to avoid answering them."

I don't have anything against a movie having a point of view, even a partisan one. But the movie must also be entertaining and well told. I loved Ken Loach's "I, Daniel Blake" (2017) and "Sorry, We Missed You" (2020). Loach is a Socialist and both movies are examples of excellent Leftist filmmaking. I put each movie at the top of my year end list in their respective years. But even with their Leftist tendencies those movies could have universal appeal. Both movies were about a political and economic system that beats down the working man. Every character in those movies was more sympathetic than the one Joan Allen plays here.

While the movie has Hanson's character take the moral high ground and not answer questions about her sex life, Lurie's script certainly wants us to equate her with sex and firmly believe she would have indeed engaged in such activities in college. Before we see Sen. Hanson we keep hearing her name spoken by the President.  He has already determined he wants Hanson as his vice-president. We just naturally assume Hanson must be a male senator. In the next scene we see the naked legs of a man and woman having sex. The phone rings and we hear her plead with the man not to answer the phone. He does but still has his pants down. He offers the phone to the woman, saying the president wants to talk to you. She answers by saying "Hello. Senator Hanson". It is supposed to be an "ah-ha" moment. Senator Hanson is a woman! And she is not just a woman. She is a woman that has wild sex on top of a desk. Kinky!

Not only has my appreciation of the movie as a whole lessen, but so too has my appreciation of Joan Allen's performance. During this time in Allen's career, I firmly regarded her as one of the finest actresses on the screen. While I didn't care much for Oliver Stone's "Nixon" (1995), I thought Allen was wonderful. I was also impressed with her in Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" (1997) - another movie I plan on reviewing this year. "The Contender" simply solidified her brilliance. But all three times I watched the movie before reviewing it, I wasn't connecting to her character. I felt Hanson was merely symbolic of a political message but never a person. Never someone relatable. Not flesh and blood. 

I had also initially thought Gary Oldman delivered an Oscar worthy performance as Runyon but now feel the movie goes too over the top to make him a villain. In one scene he describes Hanson as being a "cancer of liberalism. A cancer of affirmative action". It is meant to present him as an extreme right-wing fanatic. How much better of a movie could "The Contender" have been if it was really a movie about ideas? What if Runyon was an actual character expressing Conservative points of view and Hanson argued the Liberal position? By approaching these characters the way Lurie does, he makes it too simplistic of a tale about good versus evil.

In addition to this there is some nonsense about an investigation into the death of a woman who drowned when her car drove off of a bridge and a politician - a potential VP pick (William Petersen) - failed to save her life. Although many view his attempted rescue as heroic there is someone going around asking questions about the incident.

This may be why some foolishly call "The Contender" a "political thriller". This is not a thriller. There is nothing thrilling about this movie. There is no suspense and no real concern about the death of the woman. Much like the contrast established between Webster and Hanson regarding their principles, this scenario with Petersen's character is meant to counter Hanson's in terms of heroics. Hanson, you see, is a "hero" for not only standing up for her principles but also for standing up to Republicans like Runyon and exhibiting courage under fire.

Finally there is Jeff Bridges' performance as President Evans. Bridges is a likable actor and that comes across onscreen. There isn't much for him to do dramatically but Bridges seems to be having fun with the character. He is preoccupied with trying to stump the White House chef with his Liberal Elite palate. He seems to enjoy the perks of being president but we don't sense much else about him. What could be this character's background story? Some have tried to compare the character to Clinton.

If there was anything I liked watching "The Contender" for it was probably not what Rod Lurie wanted me to come away feeling. For me, the movie exposes what a rotten system American politics is. And yet these characters almost seem to relish the back and forth fighting. Notice how Lurie often has characters playing sports - basketball, tennis, and bowling - because politics is a sport to these people. They enjoy the backroom deals and pretending they are fighting for worthwhile causes. There was a character played by Saul Rubinek I couldn't quite figure out. He plays an aide to the President but in one scene with Runyon I can't tell if he sold out the President or is playing Runyon like a piano. 

The movie seems somewhat knowledgeable about political history and appears to be taking place in a time that feels current. In this make believe world Bill Clinton did exist and is referenced as is his impeachment. President Evans has been in office for six-and-a-half years. Is this an imaginary 2007? Did Evans succeed Clinton in office? Could Al Gore have been the model for Bridges character?

Unfortunately, after all these years, I must admit  I was wrong about "The Contender". It is not a movie that holds up well. The year 2000 was an awful year for movies but I will go back and rewatch titles to see if I can come up with a replacement for this movie on my top ten list. Despite what my feelings are the movie earned two Academy Award nominations for its acting. One for Best Actress (Allen) and Best Supporting Actor (Bridges).

In the end "The Contender" is a heavy handed piece of left-wing propaganda. It seems to be knowing in the ways of politics and in spite of its intentions actually works best as a damnation of the entire political system.