Repost: Casino Jack (opens in Cleveland February 25th)

[CASINO JACK opens in Cleveland on Friday February 25th, exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Among the many oddities of last week’s Golden Globes Awards ceremony were that: 1. There are people who actually take the Golden Globes seriously (isn’t the Hollywood Foreign Press Association the outfit that infamously anointed Pia Zadora “New Star of the Year” back in 1981?); and 2. The appearance of Kevin Spacey’s nomination for his performance as infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff in Casino Jack in the "Comedy or Musical" category.

A musical it isn’t, unless you count its faux-ironic bachelor-pad musical score, and it really isn’t a comedy, at least not the intentional kind. The movie also should not be confused with Alex Gibney’s excellent documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money, which chronicled the rise and downfall of Abramoff, the GOP lobbyist who was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion in 2006, taking down with him two White House officials, nine other lobbyists and Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, and exposing the pervasive culture of political greed and corruption in Washington. Gibney’s documentary went behind the headlines to tell you more about the brash and brilliant Abramoff – his background, his motivations and machinations, and their larger political significance. Conversely, you can walk out of a screening of Casino Jack and know less about Abramoff than when you came in.

The movie is rife with problems, but main culprit is the dreadful, clunky script by Norman Snider, who is known, not surprisingly, for TV movies like Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss. The cast works hard, but can’t do anything with a script that requires them to recite elementary-level expository dialogue like, “It seems like only yesterday we were kickin’ around with the college Republicans!” and “This isn’t the ’90s anymore. Look around – it’s post-9/11.” Patchy and semi-coherent, the movie plays like a bad made-for-TV political soap opera, complete with cheating fiancés, topless hookers, red lace panties hanging from chandeliers, and Spacey, once considered one of Hollywood’s best actors, hamming it up in Abramoff’s trademark wide-brimmed fedora, like an Orthodox Jewish Tony Soprano (though it must be said that as a Jew, Spacey is definitely more “Rose of Tralee” than “Hava Nagila”.)

The movie introduces Abramoff as he enters a federal holding cell, where he asks the guard if he can get kosher food (he can’t) and explains to his bald, tattooed cellmate, named (of course) “Snake,” what a lobbyist does. This setup is about as clever as the movie gets; it’s a downward slide from there, as we watch Abramoff making deals, yelling on the phone, defrauding client Native American tribes with multimillion-dollar fees, kickbacks and double crosses over casino rights, spending lavishly on new homes and restaurants, taking Congressmen on lavish, deceptive junkets to his sweatshop paradise in the Mariana Islands, exulting with his self-indulgent protégé, Michael Scanlon (Barry Pepper) over the millions they’re raking in, and exasperating his pretty, long-suffering wife (Kelly Preston) with his insufferable impersonations of movie stars and politicians (a Spacey specialty, evidently, and probably wholly unrelated to Abramoff).

If Abramoff were as boorish as the character of screenwriter Snider’s imagination, it’s hard to imagine him peddling influence to anyone, let alone becoming a key player in the highest echelons of political power. It’s also hard to believe that Abramoff, unscrupulous but highly intelligent, would declaim repeatedly, as Spacey’s Abramoff does, “I’m Jack Abramoff, and I work out every day.” Perhaps that is the movie’s idea of clever political satire.

You know a movie is in trouble when its lone bright spot is provided by Jon Lovitz, who appears here as Adam Kidan, a fat, whiny disbarred lawyer and mattress kingpin enlisted by Abramoff in a fraudulent scheme to purchase a South Florida casino cruise line, an operation that leads to a the hiring of Big Tony (Maury Chaykin) and a gangland-style murder. This brief mob-themed sequence provides the movie with its only frisson of interest.

The story of Abramoff’s meteoric rise and ignominious fall is ripe for smart political drama. But the lead-footed, clumsily assembled Casino Jack is not that film. That, and director George Hickenlooper’s untimely death of a prescription drug overdose before the movie’s release, ­are both to be lamented. 1 1/2 stars out of 4.