Silver City (R, 2004)

SILVER CITY begins with "Hail to the Chief"-backed opening credits, then a legend across the screen, "Richard Pilager cares about Colorado." Called "Dicky" by his pals, the conservative political candidate (Chris Cooper) is filming an ad with a script that has him saying, "I've always turned to nature to sort things out in my mind, make sense of the world." But filming stops when Dicky's fishing line snags a dead body. Pilager's campaign manager Chuck (Richard Dreyfuss) hires investigator Danny O'Brien (Danny Houston) to see if one of Pilager's three most likely enemies had something to do with the body. Danny's investigation takes him to a mine safety expert whose career was destroyed by Pilager (Ralph Waite), illegal immigrant workers, left-wing reporters who keep databases of the web of connections between politicians and wealthy executives, and Pilager's bitter and angry sister, a woman who is overly fond of marijuana and archery, and Danny's own ex-girlfriend (Maria Bello), a reporter now engaged to a lobbyist.

A movie about a dim, rich, conservative political candidate named "Pilager" who finds a corpse on the end of his fishing line when he is making a commercial is not going for subtlety. Did I mention that the family fortune started with manure? Do I need to tell you about the dead fish in the lake?

This is certainly lesser Sayles, shrill, cluttered, even a little silly in its heavy-handedness. But it's still watchable, with beautifully understated performances. If Sayles fails in his insights on the political side, he still knows how to create a dozen characters we want to spend time with and dialogue it is a pleasure to hear.

Studio: Newmarket Film Group
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Billy Zane, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello
Genre: Drama
Run time: 133 minutes
Theatrical release: September 17, 2004
DVD release: January 11, 2005
MPAA Rating: R
MPAA explanation: language