Swing Vote: Comedy-drama. Starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern. (PG-13. 100 transactions. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to sfgate.com/movies.)
It's non easy to play a stupid guy. The temptations are all over - to wink at the hearing as if to say, "I'm chic, actually" - or to try to make being stupid a form of adorable. Kevin Costner plays a good-natured idiot in "Swing Vote," a middle-aged man world Health Organization has wasted what little potential he had in favor of life as a hard-drinking good-for-nothing, and he gives a remarkable performance.
It's not the kind of role that wins Oscars, because Academy Awards unremarkably go to actors playing high-status roles, powerful souls, either good or wickedness. By contrast, Bud, the likable loser in "Swing Vote," is low position all the way, a man wHO can scarce function socially, whose instincts are all wrong, whose impulses ar either common or diffident. Costner slips right into that modality of organism, bringing to the personation precision, observation and a heretofore undeveloped flair for physical comedy.
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If the advance advertising has communicated one thing about this movie, you already lie with that it's about an average swain (actually, down the stairs average) whose single vote will determine the winner of the presidential election. The scenario is this: It all comes mastered to New Mexico's electoral votes, and the popular vote in New Mexico is tied. However, Bud's ballot was never tallied, and so he has the right to chuck a written ballot - in effect, to choose the victor.
Political junkies are an obvious lifelike constituency for this picture show, and they will be amused by the presentation of the candidates and their political ads. Kelsey Grammer is the Republican incumbent, a borderline half-wit, and Dennis Hopper plays the Democratic challenger, the perfect double of the kind of liberal candidate that unavoidably loses, deuce parts Mondale and one part Dukakis, with barely a hyphen of Kucinich. When he goes skeet shooting with Bud, the recoil of the go sends him flying backward.
The political campaign comes down to a crazy crusade to court one man's vote, and so each candidate starts pandering - with the Republican posing as a pro-gay marriage environmentalist and the Democrat espousing anti-abortion, anti-immigration positions - in television ads that ar the laughable highlight of the mental picture.
However, anyone who approaches the moving-picture show with hopes of determination a serious elucidation of an intriguing political hypothetical will be disappointed. For example, until I realised it was not that kind of movie, I wanted to know wHO was ahead in the national democratic vote (an important weight to confuse in the balance in a stalemated election). I also unbroken waiting for the candidates to mystify serious in discussing the issues with Bud. But, of trend, such a story direction would deliver led to a dead end, a polemic for one
