Dubya in disguise is a winner

The redoubtable John Sayles's 15th film is as sharp a dissection of contemporary America as his first, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, was in 1979.

As a political thriller, Silver City doesn't exactly trump Michael Moore's highly coloured documentary approach, but delivers, through a fictional story, its criticism with a less blunt instrument.

It's set in Colorado (a heavily Republican state that won't like the implications of this film), where a local politician, as conspicuously fumbling as the inchoate Dubya during his first Texas election campaign, is put up as gubernatorial candidate by shady business interests.

They intend to feather their nests by converting Silver City, an abandoned mining town, into an expensive housing development.

The opening scene sets the tone. The candidate, "Dim Dickie", deliciously played by Chris Cooper, is hopeless unless mouthing patriotic platitudes. At a lakeside fishing photoshoot, with a desperate prompter at hand, he sets out to prove how much he loves the rugged Colorado life.

What he pulls out of the water, however, sends his cynical minder (Richard Dreyfuss), into spasms. It's the dead body of an illegal Mexican worker at the former mine.

The TV cameras are immediately blocked; and Danny (Danny Huston), a failed journalistturned private detective, is hired to stop further embarrassments. Unfortunately, the nearer he gets to the reasons for the Mexican's death, the more Danny suspects that Dim Dickie and his friends are hiding something nasty. When he's duly sacked, he decides to change sides.

Huston and Cooper are both outstanding in the top-class cast, which includes Tim Roth and Thora Birch as website whistleblowers; Daryl Hannah, looking sexier than ever as Dim Dickie's estranged sister; Michael Murphy as Dickie's savvy predecessor and Kris Kristofferson as the corporate tycoon out for power.

And since he is, above all, a good writer, Sayles gives them decent lines to work on. Hannah particularly thrives under his direction, proving an actress of much greater range than we might have expected.

Though the film is a bit long and one-paced, Sayles doesn't overstate his case, pessimistic as it is. He simply outlines the media's complicity with the rich and powerful, and the often disturbing results. Silver City deserves plaudits for that, and for an intriguing story.

Silver City
Cert: cert15