Casino Jack (2010)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on January 4, 2011 @ tonymacklin.net.

Casino Jack is as erratic as a floating craps game.

Part comedy, part character study, part satire, part fantasy, part violence, it has a heady run before crapping out.

Based loosely on the career and downfall of mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Casino Jack takes us on a merry chase. But its tone can't keep up.

Director George Hickenlooper [who died last August at the age of 47] and writer Norman Snider go for broke, and they get there.

Sometimes Casino Jack seems like a Keystone Lobbyist comedy; other times it's a slick character study. It's goofy and hit-or-miss.

What holds the movie together is the smart performance of Kevin Spacey as Jack Abramoff. But writer Snider gives him a sanitized Abramoff with which to work.

Casino Jack's Abramoff basically is a nice guy who wants to do good things. He has something for everybody. He eats Kosher and attends Bible class. He made a couple of missteps, but there really isn't a mean bone in his lean body.

If one stays through the credit sequence at the end, there is a clip of the actual Abramoff introducing Speaker of the House Tom DeLay at the College Republicans convention.

This is a sequence that also is portrayed in the film. There's quite a difference between the lean Spacey and the thick-bodied Abramoff. The actual Abramoff is more stolid than Spacey will ever be.

Beyond trimming Abramoff down, if Spacey is limited, it's because his character never visits the dark side. He is almost remote from the effects of his actions.

Casino Jack too often turns fraud and corruption into mere silliness.

Abramoff bilks and steals, but his victims are just the poor and the naive Indian tribes, whom he manipulates to think they need his services to further their casinos.

Writer Snider also provides some obvious lines that are intended to provide history. There's a strain to the dialogue that comes from it being freighted with background info. They're facts from Abramoff's life, but they are awkwardly grafted onto the dialogue.

Casino Jack has all the usual suspects -- DeLay, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove, Ohio Representative Robert Ney. They're a collection of soft, white men who achieved hard power.

Only Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform -- has a whit of intrigue about him. The others just seem rich, religious, empty suits.

Reed -- played by an actor aptly named Christian Campbell -- does have an effective moment of Christian spite when he throws Abramoff out of his organization.

Barry Pepper broadly plays Abramoff's undisciplined, womanizing cohort Micheal Scanlon. And Jon Lovitz -- even broader than Pepper -- plays outrageous mattress salesman Adam Kidan whom Abramoff enlists in his casino enterprises. Both characters approach being caricatures.

During his multi-faceted career Abramoff produced the mediocre movie starring Dolph Lundgren, titled Red Scorpion.

Casino Jack is Red State Scorpion -- without a stinger.

© 2000-2023 Tony Macklin