Kate Dixon (foolwiththefez)
If you like your movies to be tightly paced and plotted or if you prefer that your political satire be subtle, then "Silver City" is not the movie for you. The film is an attack on Bush era politics. To a lesser extent, it also addresses the the culpability of the press and the cultivated dis-interest of the voters that allows the vested interests to so thoroughly corrupt the political arena. There is also a lackadaisical love story and a less than urgent murder mystery. If this sounds a little meandering, it is.Bearing all that in mind, I quite liked this film. A film can take its time if the action is enjoyable. Satire need not be subtle to be accurate or pointed. As stuffed as the movie is with ideas and plots, it is also full of wonderful actors and the dialogue is natural and thoroughly enjoyable."Silver City" may not be the best work of Writer/Director John Sayles' career, but it is very representative of his style. He creates a world populated by striking and believable characters who make an impression even when they have small scenes. He knows how to get the best out of his actors; everyone in this film turns in a wonderful performance. All in all, I say that this films many charms vastly outweigh its flaws.
ggandsteve
This could have been much better. I think the writer/directors efforts to use this story / script as a vehicle for their leftist views ruined any potential this film had. Too much was crammed into the film to give real life to any of the characters, resulting in a series of what seemed like cameo roles for out of work actors, aka the "Love Boat Syndrome". I kept expecting the story to come together at the end with a plot twist, but unfortunately it was extremely predictable.Also, the Argo mine in Idaho Springs exteriors were used, but the interior shots of the mine were actually of the Phoenix Mine, which got no credits in the film.
emuir-1
Possible Spoiler ahead: I had never heard of this film, but I was attracted by the ensemble cast of well known actors and was surprised to find it was a quite funny satire. It was also good to see the character actor James Gammon in a longer than usual part as the pragmatic Sheriff, in fact his talk with Danny at the end wrapped up all the loose ends, but not in the usual whodunit fashion - the Sheriff countered every solution with an alternative ending.I like films which do not have the traditional happy ending where the plot is solved and everyone lives happily ever after. Life is not like that. Life is ambiguous. Sometimes the wrong side wins, the bad guys don't get what is coming to them and the good guys lose out. It all depends on how you view it. One of Britain's morning newspapers had a headline the morning after the 2004 election "How could 34 million voters be so dumb?" Yes, that is all it took to re-elect G. W. Bush!
Robert J. Maxwell
A nice try at educating the public that doesn't quite come off. The thing is like a bolt of lightning with its leader stroke zigzagging all over the place, unable to find earth, until it finally peters out.The many subplots, which other commenter have mentioned, don't bother me so much as the fact that they don't really seem connected to one another. There's a good deal of time spent on undocumented workers that has nothing to do with the main thrust of the movie, which has to do with a planned community to be built on contaminated land. Romances that are clipped and cartoonish.Some very good performers are involved in these goings on. Some, like Danny Huston, upon whom the plot more or less hinges, don't bring too much to the party. He looks a little like Kiefer Southerland and sounds like a disk jockey and has a Hollywood haircut. None of this is his fault, but it has to be admitted that it all lessens our interest in the story. He doesn't come across as the role he's been given. He doesn't come across as an actor playing the role either. He comes across as a simulacrum of an actor playing the role.The other actors for the most part live up to their potential. Dreyfus isn't on coke anymore, I know, but he plays the political adviser as if he were. Billy Zane is good, as always, as a fishy phony balding smiling sleaze bag. Darryl Hannah is coarser, more mature, and scrumptious. She's even cute when she's mad. Kris Kristofferson is his reliable self. Miguel Ferrer is an angry, husky, shouting, scowling right-wing media person.The standout performance is by Chris Cooper at the soon-to-be-governor Pilage. Sure, the script and the performance poke fun at George W. Bush.Here's Pilage at a Q and A session. Reporter: "So you are in favor of a mandatory death penalty?" Pilage: "Let me put it this way. We have to say to the wrongdoers that there is no place here for them. Get out. You do the crime -- you have to face your lumps." Here's GWB a few years ago. "There's an old saying in Texas. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice (puzzled pause) -- you can't get away with it." But that's nothing to squawk about. I don't know that it's any worse than the number that Travolta and Nichols did on Clinton in "Primary Colors." And anyway, we don't ask our presidents to be especially elegant in their speech, just literate enough to read. Look at Eisenhower.On top of that, Cooper doesn't simply take aim at Bush. Cooper's presidential candidate may stumble over the English language, but he's not a self-confident, strutting caricature either. He brings an understated touch of pathos to the role. He's out riding with Kristofferson's millionaire and Kristofferson waves at the majestic mountains around them and says, "People miss the big picture. You know what the big picture is?" And Cooper, bemused, at a loss, looks uncomfortably at the ground and stutters a bit before Kristofferson enlightens him -- "Private enterprise." Cooper's politician is not a man who has grown too big for his britches, just a guy who's getting in over his head and, at some level or other, realizes it.There are some good non-didactic lines in the film too. A matter-of-fact sheriff shoots a Mexican villain who is holding a gun on Huston, then wanders over to the dead body, rolls it face up, and remarks, "He has that wanted-for-questioning shot-while-resisting-arrest look about him." And I can't help but disagree with comments that argue we don't need the lesson proffered by this movie to be drilled into us. Maybe those who argue this can see "the big picture," but as a collectivity we seem to have been particularly lax in paying attention to the social problems the movie deals with. We are, as I write this, in the process of selling off our national forests to private interests and leasing to the timber industry thousands of acres that belong to us. Many of our leaders are fighting with all their resources to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, which may add two percent to our domestic oil supply beginning eight to ten years from now. And there is hardly a peep out of us.Anthropologists have delineated three possible kinds of relationships to the natural environment. (1) We can be subjugated to it, as most human beings who have ever lived have been. (2) We can live in harmony with it, treating it as a trust fund or stewardship for future generations. Or (3) we can attempt to conquer it and exploit it regardless of consequences, some of which are unforeseeable. The choice is a monumental one and deserves attention, even in an obvious polemic like this movie.
