Quick Take: "Swing Vote"

Quick Take: "Swing Vote"

August 1, 2008, 9:31 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

“Swing Vote” is the movie I’ve been waiting for all summer. Hell, I’ve been waiting all year for a movie like this.

It made me laugh and cry, gave me food for thought regarding our election process and the current presidential candidates, and sent me from the theatre with a feeling of hope and optimism. And you can’t really ask for more than that.

Imagine a presidential election so close it literally hangs on a single vote from a tiny, economically depressed town in New Mexico. Due to a malfunction with the voting booth, that one vote must be recast in order to decide the election.

Now imagine this vote belonging to one Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner, looking frighteningly like Bill Engvall), a drunken, irresponsible jackass more interested in beer and fly fishing than in the political process. In fact, Bud’s original vote was actually cast by his young, hyper-responsible daughter (Madeline Carroll) who snuck past a sleeping election judge to vote on his behalf; Bud, meanwhile, was passed out in his pickup truck outside the local tavern.

Needless to say, that last little fact will be kept secret from the hordes of media vultures who descend on Texico, as well as from the presidential hopefuls (Kelsey Grammer as the Republican incumbent, Dennis Hopper as the Democratic challenger) who come to town eager to greet and fete Bud and win his crucial vote. Bud becomes a media darling initially, then a national joke. Meanwhile, the candidates outdo each other with shameless pandering; the mounting ridiculousness of their political ads is the funniest stuff in the film.

There are so many things I loved about “Swing Vote” that I don’t even know where to begin. It’s the best written movie I’ve seen all year- entertaining and thoughtful in equal measures, laugh-loud-funny in some places and genuinely heartbreaking in others. There’s so much going on here – it’s a political satire, a dysfunctional family drama and a civics lesson all at the same time – but writer/director Joshua Michael Stern juggles it all with a light, deft touch. The film never drags or falters, and its shifts in tone and focus are assured and seamless.

And it’s some kind of miracle that a film about American politics manages to be completely non-partisan. There are no villains here, and no shining-armor good guys either. All the political players are flawed, but none fatally so. All clearly have good intentions that they temporarily lose sight of.

In fact, by the end of the film, every major character in the film has grown up and gotten a little wiser and better. Yet for all the character-building, “Swing Vote” never once feels preachy. Costner has the final, inspiring speech in the film. That’s it’s a bit longer-winded and more polished than his character would be probably capable of delivering is a very minor quibble. This is his best film – and best performance – in ages.

7 Comments

7 Comments so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI