John Sayles' timely political lampoon aims squarely at George W. Bush

As a rule, feature motion pictures -- indies as well as big Hollywood offerings -- are NOT good commentary on current events. With a pre-production process that usually involves years, films that set out to be topical are invariably dated by the time they hit the theaters.

MOVIE REVIEW

SILVER CITY

DIRECTOR: John Sayles

CAST: Chris Cooper, Danny Huston, Richard Dreyfuss

RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes

RATING: R for language

WHERE: Meridian 16, Seven Gables

GRADE: B

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But, somehow, John Sayles is right on the money this election season with one of his typical ensemble dramas -- "Silver City" -- that is also very much a fictional version of the flood of anti-Bush documentaries that are currently the rage of documentary cinema.

His character -- who Sayles acknowledges is modeled on George W. Bush -- is Richard "Dickie" Pilager (Chris Cooper), the empty-headed, perpetual frat-boy scion of a powerful Colorado political family who is, without any other qualification, running for state governor.

As the film opens, the candidate is filming a totally insincere campaign spot, posing himself as an environmentally conscious sport fisherman, when he accidentally reels in an unidentified body from the depths of a pristine Rocky Mountain lake.

Terrified the incident might stick in the public mind, his campaign manager (Richard Dreyfuss) hushes it up, quietly brings in the police and engages a private detective agency to determine if the body was left as a dirty trick by some political enemy.

The investigator rather unlikely chosen for this task is a liberal, disgraced ex-reporter (Danny Huston), and the movie is basically a private eye yarn that takes him meandering through the complex, environmentally explosive world of Western state politics.

The characters he encounters in this journey include a right-wing radio host (Miguel Ferrer), a fringe Web site liberal activist (Tim Roth), a real-estate developer in need of political help (David Clennon) and a whistle-blowing, former EPA official (Ralph Waite).

There's also Pilager's estranged sister (Daryl Hannah), his slimy senator father (Michael Murphy), the folksy conglomerate-owning monster (Kris Kristofferson) who pulls the strings in Colorado, and a slew of innocent and exploited Mexican immigrants, legal and non.

The one character he never really encounters is Pilager himself, who appears in the movie as a kind of running gag, seen delivering fatuous position statements and otherwise making a fool of himself in press conferences and hypocritical TV ads.

In its heart of hearts, the film is trying to be "Lone Star," Sayles' 1996 ensemble mystery (also starring Cooper) that captured the zeitgeist of the '90s as successfully as "Chinatown" did the '70s, and is widely regarded as Sayles' masterpiece.

And it misses: His script is so encyclopedic in its effort to encapsulate ALL the themes of the anti-corporate, anti-Republican left that it's just too busy to follow. Unlike "Lone Star," it never crystallizes in an artistic unity that's more than the sum of its parts.

But if it fails in its whole, the movie certainly shines in its parts, with a string of dead-on character performances to enjoy, and several scenes that icily express Sayles' vision of a dumbed-up America drowning in a sea of ignorance, apathy and greed.

Sayles' biggest gamble -- the casting of Danny Huston (son of John, and never much of an actor) in the lead role -- pays off. As a private eye, he's far from charismatic, but he's a sympathetic and believable loser who perfectly embodies the hangdog retreat of Sayles' New Left sensibility.

The movie is also an effective political lampoon. Cooper not only captures Bush's physical gestures, he conveys (as only a skilled actor can) a shocking moral vacuum. Accurate or not, it's a devastating portrait of a dimwitted stooge in the service of selfish money interests.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.