"Recount" (TV) (2008) - Movie Review

“Every vote needs to be counted”, Ron Klain, the man leading the democratic recounting team says where at one point crosses the political stand point of getting a victory for Al Gore but to really know the winner of the election. Kevin Spacey plays the fighting character starting from being sidelined in the campaign and coming back as the marching leader to contest for desperately getting the recount in the 2000 Presidential Election. In that staging of systems failing and falling apart emerges the political thriller film. Even when we exactly know the result, the internal success and defeats are still surprising and works as a suspense thriller.

It follows the tooth and nail fight by both the republicans and democrats literally turning into a table war for the throne of the White House. It has Bob Balaban as Ben Ginsberg along with an always powerful performer Tom Wilkinson as James Baker, the ring leader for the legal team for republicans while along with Ron Klain is Denis Leary as Michael Whouley in the democrat’s campaign. As the nation hears George W. Bush as its President, the reports does not match and the scene when the team tries to stop Al Gore in conceding is thrilling. The film has lots of those.

How they align up their warriors for the fight of this is cut shot back and forth by director Jay Roach. Warren Christopher (John Hurt) comes in for democrats and is the only member seeing the country as such and trying the means to be perfect and clean in this battle. In complete contrast come James Baker with all his ammunitions, gears, legalities, fireworks, paperclips and whatever his hand could grab to come hard with no mercy for his fellow opponents in this situation. Every body with white ironed shirt and perfectly tie knot, roll up their sleeves and allow the air in their loosened up collar as it is going to go all the way down.

What happened during that dreadful time of democracy going in shambles has its favouring hand for both the parties through the players such as Katharine Harris (Laura Dern), as the Secretary of State of Florida and US Supreme Court for republicans and Florida Supreme Court for democrats. But what the film takes on is how it never had the intention of seeing it straight as an idealist would say. Warren Christopher was seen as the soft ball player with no fiery attack as that of his opposition but his is the long term prospect and a real follower of the constitution which had its stake and got broken in this turmoil.

Jay Roach gets the cast and gets it right. Laura Dern will be the show stealer in this flooded cast presenting the woman who took the infamous decisions and statements in that times. Roach takes us through the conference rooms, glass doors with personal ears, coffee talks, smoke talk, phone conference, and moment of short lived big victories and the disaster of the so called largest democratic country in the world. At the end of it James Baker says that tanks did not arrive on the streets which are indeed true other than some aggressive protestors ready to break apart the recount procedures outside the election office. It never can be done right would be the argument but the effort never was done to get it right too.

Now with eight years passed, George Bush being re-elected in 2004 and being the man of the jokes for the late night show hosts, is it the right thing which happened? I guess the question was not about the leader but about the system. How the system got dissected in this close contest and how dirty and to the extent both of the team went on. An old quote is that you should never argue with an idiot as he/she might stoop you down to his/her level and win the argument as they are experts in their turf. Idiot may be a harsh word but it can be substituted with playing aggressive politics.

In the final moments when Ron Klain still clings on to give one more shot to this hard fought lost war, the voice of Al Gore over phone says, “I can’t win. Even if I win, I can’t win”. A man who has had it enough with the games for which he went on till he could and finally succumbed to the reality of not alone the fiasco of the system but the possibility in the decline of one’s conscience.