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Considering that Silver City is a film that advertises
itself as a Bush-bashing story, and considering the fact that
I lean pretty hard right, one might come to a quick conclusion
about my overall assessment of the film. The ironic reality is
that the parts that make fun of President Bush comprise the ONLY
thing that keeps this thing from getting a one. Chris Cooper is
a riot as a Colorado state senator who reproduces George Bush
in speech and gesture. It’s far funnier than anything SNL
has ever done.
When Cooper’s not on the screen, however – which
is most of the time – the film falls completely flat. Here’s
my theory on how this thing ever got into production in the first
place. Someone – in this case director John Sayles –
wrote a crappy murder mystery script that wouldn’t even
survive as a B-movie in the eighties. This terrible script would
never have gotten anywhere, except that one of the sideline characters
happens to be a pro-business, anti-environment state senator.
So Sayles decides to make this movie and have the actor playing
the senator imitate the mannerisms of George Bush and label the
movie a “political satire”.
There is no political satire in Silver City. In fact,
there are no real politics of any kind in Silver City.
Other than Cooper’s imitation of Bush, there is nothing
in the film that relates to anything in reality. There is absolutely
nothing here but a crappy, low-budget murder mystery.
Though Cooper gets all the attention for the movie, the lead
actor is actually a guy named Danny Huston. The plot runs around
a swarm of unnecessary and incomprehensible story-lines, but the
basic idea is pretty simple. One day, as Dickie Pilager (Chris
Cooper) is making a commercial for his campaign, a dead body comes
up in the river behind him. Dickie’s campaign manager, Chuck
Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), thinks that the other party has planted
the body and hires Danny O’Brien (Danny Huston) to investigate
the murder.
Danny runs around, picking up clues in weird places, such as
Dickie’s psychotic sister (Daryl Hannah), and a Mexican
guy whose name I can’t remember. The dead body turns out
to be a Mexican illegal alien working on a cattle ranch. This
cattle ranch has some sort of complicated relationship to the
Pilager’s, and I think there’s supposed to be some
implication that the death of this Mexican guy occurred because
people were more concerned about making money than they were about
the environment or something. The script is so extremely convoluted
that there’s really no message passed on through any of
it. Not to mention the fact that it’s utterly boring from
beginning to end.
To the degree that it was about Bush – I was hoping for
a sort of republican Primary Colors. It never comes close.
To the short extent that it actually tries to say something political,
it’s so extremely one sided that it’s never even close
to credible. Primary Colors created a complex, interesting
character in Jack Stanton. Dickie Pilager, as a character, is
as flat and dull as this entire movie.
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