Casino Jack and the US of Money

Choosing which facts on which to focus must have been a hard pre-filming chore for documentary-maker Alex Gibney. An Oscar winner for Enron, the writer-director had chosen to analyse the saga of a super-lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. An Orthodox Jew and radical Republican, the charismatic character had become so greedy and vain-glorious that he actually had to be charged, and get convicted, for some of his crimes. If anyone symbolised all that was and still is wrong with the astronomically expensive American political system, Jack was the man, as is revealed both wryly and frighteningly in Casino Jack and the United States of Money. [The dramatised biography, starring Kevin Spacey, also released in 2010, is noted separately.]

For two increasingly infuriating hours, Gibney presents Jack's career as an illustration of the ways in which bribery, and the lobbyists who arrange and disburse it, dominates Washington DC. It would have been ideal to hear Abramoff's interpretation of events, and Gibney bitterly regrets that the Department of Justice apparently compelled its prisoner to withdraw his agreement to be interviewed.

There are many wonderfully bizarre aspects to the whole Abramoff scandal, from Jack's two-timing of the American Indian tribes which paid him millions in cash he forwarded to his political contacts, to his involvement in right-wingers' organisation of an anti-communist "Republican Woodstock" in a corrupt corner of Angola during its civil war, to his organisation of junkets in Scotland and Russia. Clearly an aggressive achievement-oriented egoist with genuine ultra-conservative views, Jack went from successful but non-profitable college politics into action-film production using South African government funds (Red Scorpion, starring Dolph Londgren, being the best/worst effort in a decade-long career).

Lobbying came naturally to the charming politico, and he made big money from Sino-American-owned garment-industry sweatshops in the little-regulated Northern Marianas and then from the naive Indian tribes' business. The latter is an area that Gibney could well explore further, because his account of Jack's machinations has no room for questions about the USA's rationale for, and the oversight of, Indian casinos and their huge cash flows. Many times during the documentary, Gibney lifts a factual stone and has to ignore cancerous growths it reveals.

He manages the cascade of scandalous details well, cutting to black and caption boards whose droll wordings echo statements made by interviewees. The exchange of racist, crude and money-fixated emails between Jack and his gungho henchman is cutely illustrated, but most of the time, the interviewees and contemporary newsreels provide dramatic, damning evidence that needs no cinematic highlighting. A fidgety negative point is the over-frequent use of cuts to close-ups of interviewees' moving fingers.

Gibney's review suggests that Jack could have got away with his game forever (as his fellow K Street lobbyists did and do) if he hadn't been so ludicrously self-confident, greedy and obsessed with reaping his own casino profits. The documentary also reveals how Jack's downfall resulted from serendipitously coincidental snooping by just a few people both in the media (the Washington Post and a Louisiana local paper) and within the exploited Indian councils.

In Gibney's reality, the key female interest is the Washington Post reporter who followed leads that led to Jack's exposure. In Snider's drama, the henchman has a jealous girlfriend who spilled many beans to a journalist girlfriend. There are other occasions in which one senses that Gibney deliberately donned blinkers, and Snider employed dramatic licence.

What approach will Jack himself use after his final release? Assuming that his wife and children awaited his return, and that money is the only answer Jack knows for life's questions, he'll either go on an extensive lecture tour - or let wealthy Republicans buy his silence. But Jack would hate silence and nonentity.

Depressingly, Gibney shows that the ultra-conservatives have already recovered from the scandals of Jack, Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Gingrich, Rove et al, and are emceeing the Tea Party. Even worse, he notes that this year the US Supreme Court removed virtually all limitations on political donations, thus ensuring even bigger slush heaps in DC, and even stronger incentives for politicos, lobbyists and their clients to never allow fundamental changes to the system they've bought.