Silver City

[El Duderino]

Release Date
September 17, 2004

Director
John Sayles

Screenwriter
John Sayles

Cast
Danny Huston
Chris Cooper
Maria Bello
Daryl Hannah
Tim Roth
Thora Birch
Kris Kristofferson
Cheech Marin
Richard Dreyfuss
Billy Zane
Mary Kay Place

Synopsis
Set against the backdrop of a mythic "New West," SILVER CITY follows grammatically-challenged, "user-friendly" candidate Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper), scapegrace scion of Colorado's venerable Senator Jud Pilager (Michael Murphy), during his gubernatorial campaign.

When Pilager finds that he's reeled in a corpse during the taping of an environmental political ad, his ferocious campaign manager, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), hires former idealistic journalist turned rumpled private detective Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston) to investigate potential links between the corpse and the Pilager family's enemies. In the tradition of the great films noir, Danny's investigation pulls him deeper and deeper into a complex web of influence and corruption, involving high stakes lobbyists, media conglomerates, environmental plunderers, and undocumented migrant workers.

With pitch-perfect dialogue, unerring sense-of-place, and a slashing satiric strain, SILVER CITY offers John Sayles's timely and toxic look at the state of the union on the eve of the 2004 Presidential election.



Trailer Here

[NEON MERCURY]

my inside sources say cooper will be nom for an oscR...

[meatball]

..

[Ravi]

John Sayles was on Now with Bill Moyers this past Friday talking about this film.  I hope this one is good.

[Ghostboy]

I saw this this morning, and was surprised at how little Cooper is actually in it. It's a pretty good movie -- a little uneven, in that it starts out as very smart satire and then moves almost entirely into mystery territory that feels very reminiscent of Lone Star. Danny Houston is the lead, and anyone who saw him in ivansxtc will surely be excited to see him with this much screentime again.

The satirical elements are dead on. Although Bush himself is the subject of a few direct jabs, the satire of the movie is evident from the first frame of Pilager's campaign advertisement -- every facet of the character is a direct jab at Bush, his family and primarily his administration. Despite its humor, Sayles paints a more realistic portrait of corporate takeover of the White House than The Manchurian Candidate did.

The whole thing ends with one of the most deliciously dark and ironic images in recent memory that, for me, would be worth the price of admission.

[RegularKarate]

I saw this a few days ago and there's not much action in this thread, but I wanted to send out a warning.

This movie is horrible.  What an extreme disapointment.

I love John Sayles, but everything about this movie was bad... ESPECIALLY the acting.

I have probably walked out of three movies in my entire life (and at least one of those was an emergency)... this was the third.

We watched most of it, but the jokes weren't funny, the mystery was bland and (once again) the acting was horrible.  It was like no one cared... I got the feeling that no one really knew what tone the movie was supposed to have.

Maybe I wouldn't have left if the mystery had started sooner because there was no grab for at least the first hour... none.  

Really disapointing... Sayles usually gives me something great... this time, it was just shit.