It would be hard to talk about this movie without revealing too many of the plot twists. What I feel like I can say is this: On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give this movie an 8. Why? First, Joan Allen is an awesome actress. Second, the movie was good, but had some flaws. The first act was brilliant. It was interesting, it set up the characters, and it got you hooked. The second act was also very good. It threw some good plot developments at you, and was loaded with surprises that kept you wondering what would happen next. Unfortunately, the third act of this movie wasn't bad, but lacked the greatness of the first two acts. The focus of the movie seems to slowly shift from the main character (the vice presidential nominee) to the president about half-way through the second act. The president in this movie is a portrayed well, and could probably carry his own movie, but I really don't like it when movies do this kind of shifting. Then, the film's final scene is extremely similar to the last scene of "The American President." (If you're going to rip-off another movie, then it's a good idea to rip-off a good one, so at least they got that right.) I'm also not clear on what Christian Slater's character really had to do with the outcome of the movie. On a more trivial note, there was a small problem with accuracy in this movie. Hardly any of the sets in this movie looked like their real life counter-parts (which most Americans are familiar with thanks to CNN and C-SPAN). Personally, I would also think that the V.P.'s nomination would be derailed by her controversial views on religion, rather than who or how many people she had been physically intimate with 20 years ago. The point of the movie is that there's just some questions that people shouldn't have to answer. Remember, this film came out during a presidential election where one candidate was avoiding questions about his drunk driving record/alleged drug use, while the other candidate was trying to down-play the fact that his predecessor had been impeached for answering a question he shouldn't have (and, yes, they do mention Pres. Clinton by name in the movie, which makes we wonder if the movie is set 8 or 12 years in the future). Overall, I would recommend this movie to you if you like political thrillers or movies that deal with controversial topics.
Review of The Contender
