SILVER CITY
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: John Sayles gives us a murder mystery
highlighted by several cynical observations of
current American politics. The film has an
all-star cast. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or
6/10.
As is frequently the case with John Sayles films, it is the
background that is the real point of the film and the foreground
story is really just a good excuse to explore the background. In
SILVER CITY we have a murder mystery set in Colorado. As the
murder mystery the film does function but only with tepid
interest. Looking for the murderer we also get more than an
eyeful of state politics during a political campaign for a state
gubernatorial election. And the governor's race is really a
thinly veiled commentary on the very real upcoming national
election.
Running for the top position in Colorado is Dickie Pilager (Chris
Cooper), the less than competent--and not even coherent--son of a
former Senator (Michael Murphy). While a political advertisement
is being shot falsely portraying Dickie as a great outdoorsman and
fisherman, Dickie's fishing line fouls on something in a lake.
The something turns out to be a corpse. Is it something that has
been planted there to sabotage the campaign? Private investigator
Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston) is hired to find out just how the
corpse got in the lake. Is it connected with an attempt to smear
Dickie? From the outset this seems unlikely since the snagging of
the corpse was such an unlikely event. But the Pilager family and
their advisor Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss) want to be sure and
more importantly want to control any information found. O'Brien
will have to be getting involved with the local mining and
agricultural interests where not all of the policy smells a lot
better than the corpse did. As a dubious guide along the way is
Dickie's sister Madeleine Pilager (Daryl Hannah). She has little
love for the politicians in her family, but is as likely to be a
dangerous friend to O'Brien.
John Sayles makes films very much like Robert Altman does. He
uses a big company of familiar actors with whom the viewer can
feel comfortable. His cast includes here Billy Zane, Richard
Dreyfuss, Daryl Hannah, Kris Kristofferson, and Tim Roth. Most
Sayles plots are in no hurry to go anywhere in particular. He
shows us how corruption does damage in the fields of agriculture
and mining and he looks at how the corruption runs deep and
actually works.
The plot as expected of Sayles is intelligent and he makes his
political points just barely avoiding being strident.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38669 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1321885 X-RT-TitleID: 1135479 X-RT-AuthorID: 1309 X-RT-RatingText: 6/10
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