Casino Jack Depicts Abramoff as Flawed but Human
Hollywood must have been chomping at the bit to tell the story of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Today’s filmmakers relish the chance to bring down GOP-friendly targets and aren’t above twisting the facts to do so. Consider Fair Game, the new film which buries the identity of the leaker in the Valerie Plame case until the film’s waning moments, the better to slander folks like Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd dubbed it “Hollywood’s Most Untruthful Film of the Year,” in a recent edition of their Poliwood show on PJTV.
And the 2008 film W. portrayed a two-term Republican president as a notch or two above a dunce.
Abramoff doesn’t deserve our sympathy. The super-lobbyist swindled Native American tribes out of millions and managed to make dirty politics even dirtier with his fiscal high jinks.
So it’s fascinating to see Casino Jack, a film that dares to make Abramoff a flawed but very human character. Yes, the new film demonizes the figures swirling around the scandal and makes sure not to slam the Democrats who got caught up in the scandal. But Casino Jack entertains first and foremost, something the aforementioned films couldn’t be bothered to do.
Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey stars as Abramoff, a well connected lobbyist whose ambitions far outstrip his moral code. His work on behalf of Native American tribes takes a nasty turn when he realizes he can charge exorbitant fees in exchange for his political connections.
He’s egged on by his right-hand man Mike Scanlon (an oily Barry Pepper) and the chance to live a life that’s anything but mediocre. Spacey delivers a telling monologue in the film’s opening scene that shows Abramoff’s inability to accept anything save greatness.
Abramoff’s schemes start to pay off, but his ego and bank account aren’t satisfied. He learns of a floundering Florida casino and enlists a shady businessman (Jon Lovitz) to help revive it. Lovitz’s post-Saturday Night Live career has been fitfully creative at best. Here, he’s perfectly cast as the kind of moral cretin who sometimes succeeds in our culture — for a while.
As a tea party conservative, why should I go see another liberally-biased movie and support Hollywood New Age film makers? No thanks. If I do go see a movie this Christmas season, I’ll be seeing The Little Fockers rather than this movie.
The movie is relatively fact based…it was what it was and depicted pretty accurately down to Abramoffs penchant to performing one liners in important meetings.
Kevin Spacey delivers in this performance.
I admire Christian Toto’s dedication to the increasingly lost art of movie review, and appreciate PJ Media’s inviting him to post, but I’m in agreement with #1 ‘Never’.
This one stays in the ‘not one dime’ catagory awaiting an HBO release.
It’s astonishing how far Spacey has fallen as a bankable star since his AMERICAN BEAUTY high point – when many in Hollywood genuinely believed he was the best actor performing today. Even more surprising is that neither age nor personal failing (drugs/illness) has little to do with it. He should be in his prime. Mr Toto is far too kind when mentioning Spacey hasn’t had a note worthy performance (or impressive box office) for many years. Could Bush Derrangement have a professional trigger?
Several other points worthy mentioning. Andrew Klaven and others have opined from the inside in a few ways but it bears mentioning over and over. There is a method to the madness of these liberal bombs that create a false conventional narrative bashing conservatives.
IN THE VALLEY OF ELI, RENDITION, FAIR GAME, now CASINO, (the war films alone are approaching two dozen) all reflect two distinct forms of currency, which does help explain why they keep getting made despite dismal domestic box office. First and foremost such projects are self-reinforcing in the dominate hollywood culture – which partly explains why you see so many of the same folks attached to these monstrosities.
While the high profile star like Sean (pinhead) Penn usually issues widespread press releases announcing a cut rate fee on his part for participation, just about everyone else above and below the line make good money irregardless of how the film plays in flyover country. So as a cottage industry it keeps those rolling them out in the pink so to speak. Call it the university professoriate tenure effect.
Such attachments also keep one in good standing in what is a highly poltizied industry – an industry whose unions contributions rival those at the Government Unions – and are as reliable to one side as the Black Vote – and expotentially more valuable.
And here is the final observation that is a heckva kicker; besides being culturally re-inforcing for those profiting while making these crappy anti-conservative & just as often anti-american confections – they largely get underwritten through their foreign reciepts – where the themes are quite popular with a certain demographic.
And these profits go far beyond what the intial box office is. Because fans over there – including such hell holes as Iran and North Korea – just like the craving for Levi’s in the former Soviet Union – people buy CD’s and rent vids even if they have to do it on the black market (which is certianly more disconcerning to the creaters of this tripe – since the black market pays no royalty or fee).
So the notion by some that there is a perverse incentive taking place, namely that these losers only hurt those that make them, they have got the incentive all wrong. Likewise the logic that they will soon stop as a result. Really, thus far everybody does make out.
It also should persuade those of a conservative bent – who have the money to produce alternatives along the lines of Capra or Wilder extolling American Exceptionalism – that they should cast off their doubts that there isn’t a genuine profit to mine – not just for immediate gratification – but for many many years.
Mr Toto should have much more to write about rather than the occational BLIND SIDE. It also might have the added benefit of slowing the tide of the leftist cottage industry – because nothing gets imitated in hollywood like success.
Friend of conservative or liberal, Abe Jackemoff was the sort of biped slime that gravitates toward Washington and in the process, corrupts all that it touches.
He shamed all Jews when he portrayed himself as a “Black Hat” and perpetrated the magnitude of scam that he did. He and Madoff should share a cell in a deep hole.