Casino Jack

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***

Casino Jack's ace-in-the-hole is Kevin Spacey, once more playing the cynical, snappy type of character he made so memorable in American Beauty. He's clearly enjoying every manic moment here, throwing in the occasional celebrity impression besides, and the screenplay by Norman Snider does a nice job of feeding his frenzy. There isn't much room for others in this kind of one-man show -- such as Kelly Preston, stuck in the sidecar playing Spacey's wife -- but Jon Lovitz gets in some nice moments as a sleazy, small-time hood.

Spacey plays Jack Abramoff, a "superlobbyist" in Washington D.C. with connections and influences all over town. (Abramoff was also the subject of a documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, released about six months earlier.) As the film begins, we see him conning American Indian tribes out of millions of dollars in exchange for his services. He and his partner Michael Scanlon (Barry Pepper) also become involved with a shady mafia-connected businessman (Lovitz) and some floating casinos. He brags about using these profits to open restaurants and schools, but he always seems to be running low on cash and always looking for the next scam. Eventually, Jack and Michael go too far and their high-priced world begins to tumble down around them.

Director George Hickenlooper -- whose final film this is (he passed away in October of 2010) -- can't quite fine-tune the movie into the tight comedy it should have been; it's a little uneven in places and a little wobbly in others. But to its credit, the movie gambles on a really nasty lead character and doesn't bother with trying to make him "likable." The movie knows that Jack is a terrible person, and allows the audience to know that, too. The trick is that Jack doesn't know it. When he blusters into a scene, his own lack of self-awareness goes hand-in-hand with the movie itself, and the result is a kind of reckless abandon that can be appealing.

Overall, Casino Jack is an irreverent portrait of our troubled times. Like the Grinch, Abramoff is more fun when he's being bad, but perhaps the more crucial moments are the ones in which he somehow doesn't get his way; his tantrums in these scenes point to the kind of selfishness and sense of entitlement that Charles Ferguson also described in his Oscar-winning, disturbing documentary Inside Job, and which contributed to our current economic decline. It's fascinating to see this portrayed in an emotional, character-driven way, rather than being studied or analyzed.

In a bit of interesting movie trivia, Abramoff is also the real-life story writer and producer of the Dolph Lundgren action movie Red Scorpion (1988).