DEATH OF TRADITIONAL CINEMA

There are many film directors who are excellent in their craft even if they do not write their own material, Scorsese, Spielberg, and Eastwood to name a few. However, I still prefer those who can write and direct, with names like Almodovar, Wong Kar Wai, Coen Bros. and after watching THE CONTENDER, my admiration for Rod Lurie solidified not only as a one-time success with his later film NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (which I saw first).  Like Eastwood, Lurie knows how to turn words off the script into interesting visual drama. Politics is really Lurie's comfort zone, and like in NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, this sophomore film from Lurie surprised me when I least expected it. Both feature heroines in great distress who rise up to the occasion and prove among everyone they are equal with men, but whereas NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH ends on a sad note, THE CONTENDER emerges triumphant. Joan Allen plays Laine Hanson, a Senator tapped by the United States President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) to be hi...

*may contain a little bit of spoiler Politics is a dirty game. If you want to preserve your conscience, integrity, and/or whatever values you may have left in your body, do not enter it at all costs. In order to succeed in a political career, it seems that the accepted practice is to get results no matter the consequence. In fact there is no arena more brutal in human existence than a political arena because the players are all under the guise of fancy suits and fake smiles.  Clooney's latest turn as a director (and co-writer) dabbles into politics with the premise of idealism, as embodied by the story's protagonist Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), a young, driven, and brilliant deputy campaign manager to Governor Mike Morris (Clooney) who's in it to become the next United States president. In fact this is nothing new, since the case of the young idealist losing his innocence to the unforgiving social and political system is inevitable, and such is exactly what happens her...