On the one hand, this is the rare and admirable story of a woman fighting for power, and the opposition any such woman would encounter is not candy-coated. This nation will not have a woman president for quite some time yet- I believe we will have a black male president first, even though women are more than half the population and blacks are something like 14%. This is still a country deeply afraid of women, and the combination of politics and the double standard is a vicious one. It also briefly tackles the hypocrisy of anti-abortionists and the separation of church and state. I admire the film-makers for addressing these issues, but I also have my 'howevers'. First of all, the ending was frankly overwrought. Second of all, this movie is ostensibly a fictional work. If you believe that, you probably also believe 'Planet of the Apes' wasn't about the mistreatment of blacks and that 'The Crucible' wasn't about McCarthyism. This movie was at least in part about the Clinton administration, although I think that was inevitable. You can no longer make a movie about sex in politics and have it not be at least somewhat about Clinton's terms in office. It's also frankly pro-Democrat. Now the thing is, I don't have a problem with it defending the Clinton administration or it being pro-Democrat. While I disagree with some of the things Clinton did, his sexual life is his business. That's not being anti-morality, it's being pro-privacy, and I applaud a movie that upholds that ideal when our culture is awash in sleaze and our bedroom behavior is daily fodder for tabloids. I'm not Democrat, but I'm even less inclined toward Rebulicans, and I will agree with another reviewer here that no Democrat is so angelic as Joan Allen's character, although there are certainly Republicans like Gary Oldman's. As for Hollywood being awash in liberals- I would imagine so. Film-making is on some levels still a creative endeavor, creative people will have a higher tendency towards liberalism, and conservatives are all for advocating environments that suffocate creativity and free-thinking. On the other hand, there has already been a very fine and honest movie made about the Clintons- it's called 'Primary Colors', and it comes with a strong recommendation from me. I cannot believe there is a politician as noble as Laine Hanson- rising to that level of power ensures that. Indeed, I believe there are very few people that noble. Some of the film-makers behind 'The Contender' might well have a spark of it, but were that spark full-blown, this would have been a more honest film.
Review of The Contender
