Fast Food Nation
Rated: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Starring:
Patricia Arquette - Cindy
Bobby Cannavale - Mike
Paul Dano - Brian
Luis Guzmán - Benny
Ethan Hawke - Pete
Greg Kinnear - Don Henderson
Kris Kristofferson - Rudy
Lou Taylor Pucci - Paco
Bruce Willis - Harry
Fast Food Nation permanently cements director Richard Linklater as one of my least favorite filmmakers. He has a best-selling book which lends itself well to drama and instead misses the point completely because he’s too busy doing what he always does: focusing on the majesty of people talking.
Conversation isn’t necessarily a problem and for the first two-thirds of the film, Linklater gets away with it. The film follows Greg Kinnear as Don Henderson, VP of Marketing for a fast-food chain. His boss wants him to go out to meat-packing plant in Colorado and double check an independent study that says there’s “shit in the meat”. Along Henderson’s journey, he comes across other cogs in the machine: illegal immigrants who work at the meat-packing plant, ranchers who are losing their land to big corporations, and teenagers who work the register. Unfortunately, Linklater keeps getting side-treked by his fictional human drama which ends up enveloping the story rather than coloring it. It’s good to know what jobs and what kind of training these non-English speaking immigrants are getting but not that they sometimes have sleazy foremen. It’s important to know that teenagers are working in a dangerous environment since fast-food restaraunts are especially vunerable to armed robbery but unimportant that their families want them to follow their dreams.
As the film grinds through its third act, Don is nowhere to be seen. He’s depressed that there’s crap in the beef, but feels powerless to do anything about it. Without the anchor and a sensational story to follow, Linklater runs for comfort in shallow conversations between supporting characters that have little to do with the fast-food industry. Linklater fixture Ethan Hawke shows up out of nowhere so he can tell his fast-food employee niece Amber (Ashley Johnson) that she should follow her dream of being an astronaut. The lack of an epilogue explaining the facts of fast-food world show that Linklater cares little for the harsh reality of Eric Schlosser’s book. But with this summer’s A Scanner Darkly and now Fast Food Nation, Linklater makes it clear that he’s more interested in the white noise of idle character conversations than the substance of what their author has to say.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
10.15.06