"Silver City" /John Sayles. A best political movie I've seen in awhile!

It's incredible. I can't imagine any DU'er not seeing this movie and understanding that Sayles is talking about our last four years with Bush And..it goes beyond that.

I can't believe that this movie got so little attention before the election. But, it's a movie that takes time and some experience of life to understand. It was probably too heavy for many folks.

Here's a couple of reviews. It might make a great weekend rental if you just can't get enough of politics. :D

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Plot:
From John Sayles, one of the essential, iconoclastic voices of American independent cinema, comes SILVER CITY, a film that is equal parts scathing political lampoon and sun-stunned neo-noir detective story.

Set against the backdrop of a mythic “New West,” SILVER CITY follows grammatically-challenged, “user-friendly” candidate Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper), scapegrace scion of Colorado’s venerable Senator Jud Pilager (Michael Murphy), during his gubernatorial campaign.

When Pilager finds that he’s reeled in a corpse during the taping of an environmental political ad, his ferocious campaign manager, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), hires former idealistic journalist turned rumpled private detective Danny O’Brien (Danny Huston) to investigate potential links between the corpse and the Pilager family’s enemies. In the tradition of the great films noir, Danny’s investigation pulls him deeper and deeper into a complex web of influence and corruption, involving high stakes lobbyists, media conglomerates, environmental plunderers, and undocumented migrant workers.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:LhsqjvmXyi4J:www.themoviebox.net/movies/2004/STUVWXYZ/SilverCity/main.html+Silver+City,+John+Sayles&hl=en

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Special to FILMS FOR TWO®
by Alan Waldman

I really liked John Sayles’ new political satire/detective mystery SILVER CITY and I highly recommend it, although roughly half of America’s film critics disagree with me. I find it interesting that there was almost universal love for the first 13 movies Sayles directed among mainstream critics, but they have either panned or been lukewarm toward three of his last four (LIMBO, CASA DE LOS BABYS and SILVER CITY; most of them liked SUNSHINE STATE). As you can see from the links, Jan and Rich of FILMS FOR TWO liked all 10 “Sayles calls” that they’ve made—especially LONE STAR, MATEWAN and SUNSHINE STATE.

ALAN WALDMAN’S NINE FAVORITE JOHN SAYLES FILMS


1. CITY OF HOPE (1991)
2. RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7 (1980)
3. LONE STAR (1996)
4. SILVER CITY (2004)
5. SUNSHINE STATE (2004)
6. MATEWAN (1987)
7. BABY, IT’S YOU (1983)
8. PASSION FISH (1992)
9. EIGHT MEN OUT (1988)

Most world critics agree with me that John Sayles is one of the most original, most principled, most talented and most important American independent filmmakers of the past quarter-century. He was nominated for two Oscars (for writing LONE STAR and PASSION FISH), four Writers Guild honors, five Independent Spirit Awards, an Edgar, a Golden Globe and 33 other awards (eventually winning 18 of these). Sayles has also won or been nominated for major awards at film festivals in Britain, Spain, Belgium, Cannes, Deauville, Tokyo, Sundance, Florida, Texas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Taos and New York City. Even more remarkable: those awards and nominations were earned by 13 separate works of his.

Before explaining why I loved SILVER CITY, let me suggest two reasons that some of the other critics panned it. First, many of them, poor dears, found the combined genre of mystery and political satire confusing or distressing, especially when further complicated by a love story. Fate forefend that we should offer audiences more than just one “high-concept” in this era of hackneyed flicks for acned dudes ‘n’ chicks, created by fearful corporate clods!

-SNIP-

The central story has Dreyfuss hiring gumshoe Huston to discover why a dead Mexican laborer was found in a scenic lake where Cooper is about to be photographed doing a misleading pro-nature TV spot. (In time, we will learn that Cooper—working hand-in-cesspool with the callous killer capitalist Kris Kristofferson and dupe developer David Clennon—is actually a vicious despoiler of the environment.) Huston’s journey brings him in contact with a cornucopia of colorful characters, including a vengeful Rush Limbaugh clone (Miguel Ferrera), a ruthless coyote (Luis Saguar), a washed-up whistleblower (Ralph Waite), two crusading internet journalists (Tim Roth and Thora Birch), a slimy lobbyist (Billy Zane), and a crooked sheriff (James Gammon), not to mention Dickie’s bitter sister (Daryl Hannah).

Just as MACBETH and other Shakespearean tragedies effectively interspersed drama with comic relief, so Sayles interposes the Bush/Rove/Halliburton spoofs with the serious social misdeeds that Huston uncovers on his crime-solving search. One of Sayles’ great strengths, throughout his career, has been his ability to create three-dimensional characters. His heroes and villains are never all good or all bad, but have motivations that define them and give them dimension. One of SILVER CITY’s real strengths of is that Sayles has populated it with a score of interesting and surprising characters.

Sayles has dealt with the major themes of SILVER CITY in many of his other movies, although this is his most satirical work—due to its terrifically observed Rove-ridicule and Bush-burlesquing. The gifted Schenectady-born writer-director-editor compellingly went after gluttonous developers in SUNSHINE STATE, took on sleazy fixers in EIGHT MEN OUT, powerfully examined exploitation of employees in MATEWAN, and focused on both government corruption and the mistreatment of Mexican laborers in LONE STAR. Sayles dealt incisively and dramatically with political chicanery and corporate immorality in what I consider his masterpiece—and the best film I’ve ever seen on big-city corruption—CITY OF HOPE.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:tLAaOegJlYYJ:www.films42.com/feature/silver_city.asp+Silver+City,+John+Sayles&hl=en

I kept seeing the Chris Cooper Character as Tom Delay and the reporter/investigator as Joe Conason. But...I love Conason and don't think this character fits him...but it just kept reminding me of him.

The press/investigator combined with the candidates whoring...is too good! So I had to put it all into my own perspective in these last few years...and those two folks are the ones I sort of saw.

Apologies Joe...but Cooper could do a real mean DeLay when the movie is done about that crook after he "goes down."