Formerly "A Movie A Day" :/

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Candidate - 1972 - Dir. Ritchie

The Candidate is a nicely subtle movie. I would have expected a lot more things banged over my head. I didn't expect such a smooth handling or skirting around major confrontations and epiphanies. You can kind of tell from the start, this movie is going to be about Robert Redford having a backbone and we're going to watch his backbone get all crushed up. Usually, with a movie like this, you sort of see the transformation very clearly. Spelt out for you as we go along. This movie seems to be a little more focused on hitting us with things as Robert Redford catches on. By the end, of course, we get the full treatment of Redford being completely spineless, and we all know it. Redford is good enough to never really show us too much. We see a ton of him with his mask on. We see the people he talks to. We see the goings on, the machinations of the campaign. What he's surrounded by. We can't really tell how McKay feels about the transformation. We get little breaks every now and then with Redford just staring helpless. The end is positively brilliant. Giving us absolutely nothing. Like Redford, we just don't know what to do. I was trying to decide to either watch this or refresh with Network. Those two are definitely in league with each other. I will most certainly compare the two.

Hey! It's Barack Obam- Oh, wait... It's just Robert Redford PLAYING Barack Obama.

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