Silver City Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)September 22nd, 2004
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
[email protected]
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
