The Contender is a political cliffhanger that really keeps
it together. It's well-written, well-paced and very well-acted.
After witnessing the real-life Monica Lewinsky affair, I thought that watching a film about a fictitious sex scandal would be about as much fun as smashing my fingers with a hammer... but The Contender wasn't like that, at all. It was much less stomach-wrenching than I feared it might be. Heck: it was entertaining!
The script was written specifically for actress Joan Allen, who plays Vice-Presidential nominee Senator Laine Hansen. Her political opponents dig up some very raunchy allegations from her fraternity days, which the Senator adamantly refuses to address, even as they snowball into a nationwide controversy and seem certain to derail her confirmation. You want to believe that they're not true, but it's hard to tell... Whatever the case, she holds fast to her conviction that her past personal life is nobody else's business, period. With a keen sense of recent history, she is determined not to validate these tactics and endorse a new wave of sexual McCarthyism.
Roger Ebert praised this movie for not being afraid to get political and take sides. Republicans might very well take offense, but the movie isn't really about the politics. It's about the tactics. The "bad guy", Congressman Shelly Runyan (played brilliantly by a sympathetic Gary Oldman) feels himself to be a protagonist. He might be an egotistical slimeball who will stop at nothing to achieve his ends, but he does believe in what he is doing. He feels strongly that Senator Hansen is not the best choice for Vice President, and he's using whatever means he can to see that his preferred candidate gets the job. All the while, the president (one of the "good" guys) is certainly no rookie in the use of dirty tricks.
Great performances abound. Joan Allen will be a very strong contender for an Oscar in this, her first major lead role. Gary Oldman is fantastic, as always. Jeff Bridges makes a very slick president: likable but shrewd, and not too simple.
This being a Hollywood film, things are, of course, slightly enhanced for dramatic emphasis. Our humble protagonists aren't typical of the political leaders we have in Washington DC. They're the type we wish we had; they stand behind their principles, no matter how inconvenient this becomes. And yes, you can expect one of those annoying "rousing speech with 60-piece orchestra music in the background" scenes. (Gaggggg...)
Minor complaints aside, The Contender was a great movie. It was fun to watch, but also very relevant in this political day and age.