Dir. Richard Linklater, 2006, UK/US, 116 min
Cast: Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Greg Kinnear, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzmán, Bobby Cannavale
Review by Joyce Dundas
It was always going to be a difficult project to adapt Eric Schlosser's exposé of the fast food industry in the US into a feature film. The author packed so much detail into the book that potential filmmakers would always have their hands full trying to adapt it. For that reason Linklater does seem like the perfect choice, a right-on vegetarian and one of the modern masters of the ensemble cast. However, his film is a hit and miss affair.
Unlike some of Linklater's other films – A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life for instance – Fast Food Nation is pretty accessible to a mainstream audience. It has a large, talented ensemble cast, it is based on a highly-successful book and the production values are slick and professional.
Unfortunately, critics and audiences have not embraced the movie and that could be because in trying to cover all the shocking revelations about the American meat industry made by Schlosser in the book, the film spreads itself almost as thin as a McDonald's burger pattie. While some of the characters are as bland as processed cheese.
Linklater obviously has his heart in the right place, but modern, post-Michael Moore audiences expect their caustic or scathing films to spare no prisoners. This film just doesn't deliver. There is also a distinct lack of the cynical humour present in Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, the kind filmgoers have come to expect.
What is particularly worth noting about the film is Linklater's collaboration with Participant Pictures a relatively new production company set up by eBay founder Jeff Skoll. This is one of the most interesting companies around at the moment, with a back catalogue, including Oscar winner An Inconvenient Truth, North Country, which examines sexual abuse in a US mining community, and George Clooney's two worthy films of 2005, Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck. Veteran UK producer Jeremy Thomas and Sex Pistols creator Malcolm McLaren were also involved in producing the film, so it is slightly disappointing that it isn't a bit more “in your face”. However, that might have served to alienate the more commercial cinema audience that the filmmakers are determined to reach.
Linklater has pointed out that during his early conversations with Schlosser it emerged the writer had no desire to turn his book into a documentary. He says that through the way these people are struggling with their lives and their jobs, the issues the filmmakers and the book's author are trying to get across would emerge.
Unfortunately, some of the immigrant workers' stories fall into stereotype and in some cases there is a whiff of the filmmakers patronising those particular characters. It is understandable that they would be powerless to control their fate in some ways, but after the frightening exploitation and ultimate tragedies, would they really be that powerless. The film seems to open lots of cans, but doesn't help the viewer gather up the worms.
The characters themselves, all with some link, however distant, to the fast-food industry are spread a little thin, though the acting on the whole is good. Valderrama as Raul, the most sympathetic of the exploited workers, is strong and believable with what he is given. Moreno, playing Sylvia, is wonderful in a good female role as the woman completely out of her depth, trying to better her and her partner's lives at all costs. Kristofferson and Willis play characters as set in their ways as their maturity would imply and both prove they can make a lot from slim material.
Kinnear is a particular standout as Don Henderson, the mild-mannered marketing man for the fictitious burger chain, Mickey's. It's his character who hears the immortal line from the book: “There's shit in our meat,” from the chairman of the company who then sends him out to investigate this worrying phenomenon. However, it doesn't help that his character disappears completely from the plot half way through the film and doesn't pop up again until the credits.
Linklater isn't going away though, he seems determined to keep shaking it up with the choices he makes and this is not a bad film just a bit of a disappointment given the talent involved.
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