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.

Casino Jack

Casino Jack is a fun-filled vehicle for Kevin Spacey to give himself a joyride impersonating the character (not the features) of convicted super-lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

The docudrama looks at Jack from many different angles to those used in the two-hour documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money (noted separately). That's an astonishing portrait of a greedy go-getter exploiting systemic fault-lines in US capitalism. Inevitably for a feature targeting non-arthouse audiences, the factional title character is a more lovable rogue who's depicted as led astray (albeit very easily).

As the documentary's director, Alex Gibney, remarks in one of his DVD's extras, "Kevin Spacey's a great actor, but he ain't Jack Abramoff". That's probably an echo of the famed putdown of VP candidate Dan Quayle, and Gibney's documentary clearly shows that the fictionalised Jack underestimates the man's political shrewdness, radical rightism and charm quotient.

The docudrama was written by Norman Snider, a specialist in TV treatments of scandals (such as Heidi Fleiss) whose only previous major big-screen work was co-writing David Cronenberg's adaptation of Dead Ringers. Snider covers a lot of territory, as did Gibney, but he focuses more attention on the gangland killing of the Greek casino owner whose operations Jack and a close buddy sold to themselves.

Snider also illustrates Jack's Orthodox Jewishness more clearly, from his wearing of the skullcap beneath his comic gangster hat and baseball cap to his creation of an elite kosher diner in Washington DC, from his efforts to fund a Jewish boys school to his demand for kosher food in a police holding cell. Gibney chose to omit such tell-tale details, and the ethnic angle in Jack's life is made clearer too by Snider's depiction of Jack's chosen front man for the casino operation, Jewish childhood pal Adam Kidan. He's seen as an ugly, comic, bumbling slob (SNL veteran Jon Lovitz) whereas the real man shown in interviews by Gibney (and co-operating with him and the FBI) is a smoother rueful character.

Although the producers must have had libel-wary lawyers vetting the screenplay, Snider was able to include a What-If scene in which Jack imagines halting his endless pleas of multi-Amendment Rights to divulge the political donations he'd channeled to each member of the Senate's Indian Rights committee that was investigating his actions, under the chairmanship of John McCain. Jack, a social and political ally of the George W Bush team, had helped to scuttle McCain's 2000 presidential bid, and Gibney makes it clear that the "maverick" senator may have been happy to catch Jack but probably had no idea what damage his committee's findings were going to inflict on the Republican Party.

Snider also includes Jack's family life, but the loyal wife (Kelly Preston) and a clutch of cute kids serve only to highlight Jack's fanatic obsession with public fame and riches (owning deluxe restaurants, getting photographed with the powerful, producing movies, and more). One can guess why Gibney totally ignored the wife (she apparently didn't play a criminal role in his schemes) but his family's welfare was part of Jack's rationale for his cupidity.

Spacey's Abramoff is a bully boy in a political candy store, grabbing cash from unlikely sources (primarily the American Indian tribes' licensed casino operations) to support his lifestyle and political dreams. The real Jack was obviously a brilliant shyster, as was his key ally (Barry Pepper also giving an exaggerated manic style to another astute lobbyist, a macho manipulator who liked to hang around with lifeguards). Their political associates (the GOP Majority Leader who eventually had to resign and a Republican House member who went to jail) aren't played for so many laughs.

Fittingly, the movie was directed by an experienced documentary maker, George (Hearts of Darkness) Hickenlooper. He died, at the age of 47, before the film's release. Jack was due to be released from a half-way house of imprisonment on December 4, 2010 (during Hanukkah, perhaps coincidentally). The movie was scheduled for release a fortnight later.

According to Snider's screenplay, Jack felt unfairly treated by the Washington system and sent an appeal from jail to Bill Clinton, suggesting that the former President's support of a pardon could lead to revelations favourable to the Democrats. Gibney also ignored that intriguing fact, if it's a true one.

The full story of Jack will surely never be allowed to be told; this movie is just a lively footnote for hopeful biographers.

Chatroom

In 2006, Irish writer Enda Walsh's one-hour play, Chatroom, was first staged at London's National Theatre. The prolific playwright was best known till then for his screenplay adaptation of another of his short plays, Disco Pigs (2001), but he gained more attention internationally for his co-writing of Steve McQueen's harrowing Hunger (2008). He then expanded his older NT-commissioned tale of five youngsters trapped in an Internet chat room by fifty per cent. It was a movie-length version for Japanese horror director Hideo Nakata (the Ringu/Ring franchise, Dark Water).

Nakata signed up UK-resident film editor Masahiro (Duchess) Hirakubu, who'd worked on Danny Boyle movies from Trainspotting onwards. Music was composed by Kenji Kawai, working on his fifth movie with Nakata. The all-important cinematography was entrusted to another veteran, Frenchman Benoit Delhomme (The Proposition, Merchant of Venice, Shanghai). The young lead actors had good track records too, but something went disastrously wrong with the supposed fantasy thriller.

Four North London youngsters have been attracted into a chatroom set up by William (Aaron Kick-Ass Johnson), a teenager just completing a year of psychiatric counselling with his parents. An older more successful brother may account for his mean-minded depression and Internet escapism. The online world is depicted as a lushly-coloured brightly-mildewed corridor leading through a mass of celebratory, noisy, happy party-goers to private rooms for shared visions. By contrast, the teenagers' real lives (failed parents, mental problems, sexual frustrations and lack of confidence) are photographed in dull shades, even on location in London Zoo, and Camden's canal and market.

A weakly, fatherless white boy Matthew (When Did You Last See Your Father? Beard) is on anti-depressants, a black teen (Daniel Skins Kaluuya) fancies an underage girl, an almost manic dim girl (Hannah Murray, another Skins graduate) hates her parents, and another girl (Imogen 28 Weeks Later Potts) has the hots for William, admiring his aggressive, jolly online personality, supporting his evil games with the other three chatters entering the room. The screenplay focuses on William's efforts to drive the pill-popping boy to commit suicide; the other characters aren't developed.

The appearance of a middle-aged paedophile pretending to be a young girl is another waste of screen time, designed perhaps to remind the audience that chatrooms aren't only the realm of dangerously disturbed teenagers. Johnson can still look a teen, but Potts cannot and the make-up department adds smudges and shadows that age her even more than may be natural.

None of the teens, or the parents, are credible characters. That wouldn't matter so much if the film were a fast-paced psychological thriller with menacing tensions. Nor would it be off-putting if the movie had arthouse pretensions of being a 21st Century tribute to Cocteau. But it isn't even a credible dramatic representation of chatroom texting and bombast, or cyber bullying.

As a short play, Chatroom must have had a style and content that worked well in a small theatre. They haven't been transferred effectively to the world of movies.