Originally Posted July 20th, 2010

When major decisions are determined by thin margins, it’s easy to ask oneself, “What if…?” Take, for example, the presidential election of The United States in 2000, a race that was, at one time, separated by less than two hundred votes. What if the machines in Volusia County hadn’t gone haywire and altered the voter tallies? What if the ballots hadn’t been double sided and so hard to punch? What if there had been a film that explained what was going on in a way that even a political dunce like myself could understand? After watching Recount, I have an answer for the last question, but more importantly, those first two questions become uncomfortable, even dispiriting, to consider.

Recount has a tricky line to walk - it needs to recreate the events of the Florida recount in a manner that's entertaining, but also truthful. Based on extensive research and countless interviews with nearly all the key figures, Jay Roach’s film plants the viewer right in the heart of both the Republican and Democratic campaigns, as each party tries to wrest the outcome of the election away from the other. Centring the film is Kevin Spacey as Ron Klain, the Gore campaign's prodigal son, whose shot at political restoration fuels his no holds barred approach to getting the votes counted. Spacey is backed by a bevy of other seasoned actors who, in addition to being universally convincing, also look eerily similar to their real life counterparts.

Scenes hastily jump back and forth between party camps as they respond to rulings and polls, with each group trying to outmanoeuvre the other. By showing the reactions on both sides, Recount is able to clearly communicate to the viewer the importance, if not always the details, of the day's battle. Easily the greatest strength of the film is how it manages to make mounds of political jargon and legal proceedings not only understandable, but exciting. Numerous court rulings concerning the validity of a dimpled chad (voting bubble) have the weight of a referee decision in overtime. There are so many small victories for each side that every ruling and arbitration feels like a another sway in the direction of an all-out war for the White House.

While the film wants to be taken seriously as a factual re-enactment, much of Recount’s impact comes from how well it dramatizes seemingly inconsequential events. When indication is first given that something is wrong with the voting machines, there’s a frantic race to stop Gore from giving his concession speech. It’s all heightened for dramatic purposes, but it’s certainly entertaining. Similarly heart-pounding is the appearance of a mob at one of the recount centres, where Bush supporters assault a Gore lawyer carrying a sample ballot. Again, it’s engaging because such confrontations actually happened. But as the adaptation elements begin to overtake the documentary ones, it becomes clear that anyone looking for a neutral appraisal should look elsewhere.

Recount’s only real failure is that in taking a dramatic look at the California recount, it loses its chance at being a balanced take on the events. It can be hard to blame the film though, because in reality the Democrats were, from the get-go, in a more sympathetic position. While the Gore campaign was broadcasting the idealistic motto of “every vote counts”, the Republicans had to respond by stopping the counting of invalid votes, even though they had by all accounts won. Just about every court and legislative body concerned with the recount at that time was either Republican, or somehow associated with Bush. Again, these are facts that simply enhance the perception that Gore is somehow fighting uphill against impossible odds. The Democrats come off as the scrappy underdogs while the Republicans can’t escape the appearance of having tried to not so stealthily pull the wool over the public’s eyes. Though the film can be forgiven for any opinion generated by the circumstances of the recount, certain dramatic elements only serve to reinforce the feeling that the creators are coming at the material with a strong opinion of their own.

By anchoring the story around the Gore campaign’s leader, any semblance of impartiality goes out the window. There’s some backstory given about Klain and Gore’s uneasy partnership in the past, but that history serves only to make the audience sympathetic with Klain’s attempts to redeem himself. There’s no one to humanize the Republican side the way Klain does for the Democrats. While the film makes a point of indicating that Klain was more interested in the votes being counted than the actual winner, he’s still the nice guy trying to make good, and you want him to succeed. The only person on the Republican bench given adequate screen time is Laura Dern as then Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who comes across as more of a preening debutant than an elected official.

It’s the subtleties of how the Republican Party is treated that are more concerning. Every action by a Bush supporter feels much more cloak and dagger than anything done by the liberals, and there’s an air of subterfuge about every closed door meeting and late night rendezvous. Even the Bush campaign camp, led by a Dr. Pepper chugging Tom Wilkinson, feels more based on caricatures, thanks to an almost entirely white, crew-cut sporting army of lawyers. The Bush camp contrasts heavily with the more ethnically diverse Gore crew, which operates more like a team. It’s often hard to tell where the re-enactment part of the film ends and the dramatic elements begin. It’s not the fault of the creators that they have an opinion, it just feels like any approach that isn’t apolitical is a betrayal of the authenticity that the film flirts with.

HBO was smart to approach Recount as a made for TV-movie as opposed to a big screen release. The election of Barrack Obama was mere months away, and it seems doubtful that people would pay to watch a movie about the difficulties of simply casting a vote. It’s a reminder of a period many have forgotten, but for others, would reopen the old wounds of a power transfer that looked less like an election and more like a barbaric tug-of-war. Yet, Recount’s timely release is all the more important because even though its politics aren't so subtle, it's good to know that, yes, every vote matters.

4 out of 5

Directed by Jay Roach

2008, USA

Originally Posted September 12th, 2010

Audiences are trained to be sceptical; you’re always taking a risk with the $11 you fork over for a ticket and it’s a mentality that makes some films easier to diagnose than appreciate, as one major flaw can almost always overshadow present successes. As crippling defects go, The Debt has a big one, in the form of a major identity crisis. It's not one movie so much as it is three or four smaller ones of varying tone and quality stitched together, smothering those portions of the movie that, had they been expanded, would have made for a more interesting experience. Things start out promising enough; we're introduced to three Mossad agents in the cargo hold of a plane arriving in Israel. It's 1966 and their mission was to kill or capture a Nazi war criminal hiding in East Germany so that he may stand trial for his actions. You get an idea of how things went down when it's just the agents who are leaving the plane. Rachel Singer is given credit for killing the target, a man named Dieter Vogel, whose experiments on imprisoned Jews during WWII made him known as “the surgeon of Birkenau”.

Jumping ahead to 1997, a now retired Rachel (Mirren) is giving a reading about the event from a new book written by her daughter. The father, Stefan (Wilkinson), was with Rachel in Germany. From the way the retired spies look at each other, it's apparent they share a history that their daughter is not privy to. The publication of the book coincides with rumours of new information coming out about the mission, the same day that David, the third team member, has died. It's an effective opening, full of shadows and wan looking faces, everything you'd want out of a political thriller. We then return back to '66, where a younger Rachel (Chastain) crosses over into East Germany to rendezvous with her new partners. It's her first field assignment and the trio meticulously prepare for the difficult task of getting into West Germany with the doctor in tow. It's exciting stuff early on, with plenty of clandestine handoffs and sparring matches, and one nerve-wracking escape attempt that has all the elements of good spy fiction coming together nicely.

Unfortunately, as they so often do, the plan goes awry, so it’s not long before the agents have the target in their possession, but no way of getting him out of Germany. The introduction of Vogel is first-rate stuff, with Rachel doing recon by posing as one of his patients, the prospect of being at your most vulnerable when around a mass murderer providing some very tense moments, but once Vogel is confined to a dingy safe house, things start to fall apart for both the mission and the film. Thriller as a genre is so broad that it's usually paired with other elements, which is why the in the early goings The Debt leans on political elements and its period aesthetics. But once we have our villain front and centre, director John Madden seems to think he's too juicy to keep gagged all film, and it forces The Debt to ditch its cloak and dagger elements in favour of a slower, more psychological approach that hamstrings the narrative momentum.

For trained operatives, the Mossad bunch don't seem to remember that a talking hostage is bad for team morale, giving Vogel ample opportunity to needle and undermine the trio. While actor Jesper Christensen is good, Vogel's over-characterization makes for a preening villain, over clever by half and lacking a believability that would make the political implications of his imprisonment even slightly conflicting. There’s no doubt he’s a monster, but it's a label willingly embraced at the expense of authenticity, and the accompanying tonal shift is made all the more jarring thanks to the romantic entanglements that according to movie law have to develop by having a mixed gender black ops team. Its part Silence of the Lambs, part Twilight, and unfortunately about as enjoyable as you'd imagine such an awkward melange to be. All of which would be more forgivable if it didn't comprise a third of the film, overlong to say the least but also painfully uninterrupted by the sort of intercutting between time periods that breaks up the frustration.

With only a handful of action scenes, there's plenty of character work, but having separate actors play the same person invites comparison, and though we don’t spend quite as much time with the older characters, the gap in acting talent is present almost immediately. Mirren and Wilkinson are both heavyweights and despite occasionally spotty accents they expertly convey the burden of people forced to selfishly and selflessly adopt the status of national heroes in the name of duty and pride. Chastain, who has to do most of the emotional heavy lifting for the young guns, isn't well served by the script, which saddles the younger Rachel with a vulnerability that mostly consists of her doing the “I’m about to cry but won’t” face. Sam Worthington, who comes about as close to actual acting as he's like to get as the younger David, is blown out of the water in just two scenes by a ghostly Ciaran Hinds.

So when we do return to the elder Rachel, thirty years retired but the only of her conspirators capable of tying up a loose end in their story, we get back into the spy thriller that was teased early on, and the improvement is considerable. Mirren is a commanding screen presence and the ease with which she switches from resigned retiree to smooth operator will make you suspicious of little old ladies everywhere. Yet despite the third acts marked improvement, the identity issues persist; there's a stirringly visceral climax but it's the result of the built-up thematic message being thrown under the bus in favour of a last minute turn that's just a hair away from twist territory. The whole affair is the wrong kind of rollercoaster, rising and falling in quality with such sharpness that the whole experience comes across as one big deflating clusterfuck. Those digging for the truth in The Debt will find it, but the good movie that could have been is buried still deeper.

3 out of 5

The Debt

2011, USA

Directed by John Madden