First, in regard to CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY, Alex Gibney obviously is spreading himself too thin. Like most directors given an Oscar, he suddenly thinks he needs to cover every sub-genre in his field (in his case, feature documentaries), as evidenced by the quality of the six he has released since winning the Academy Award for his masterful TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE in early 2008. CASINO JACK is no exception to this slide. The title and opening imply the movie's main subject will be the way in which the U.S. House of Representatives' Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, R-TX used millions of dollars of Native American gambling profits to illegally force the Texas state legislature to dole out a half dozen congressional seats (stolen from northern states through the U.S. Census counting of illegal aliens) to his own country-clubbing GOP cronies.
However, the first hour of this film is devoted to a peripheral sideshow involving DeLay's go-between with the Native Americans, "Casino Jack" Abramoff, and some Asian sex slaves duped into Northern Marianas Island sweat shops, chained to their sewing machines, raped by their foremen and forced to have abortions while dozens of "investigating" evangelical Christian GOP congressmen golfed at a five-star Hyatt Regency with Jack and Tom a couple miles away.
Furthermore, Gibney skims over the relationship between DeLay, Abramoff and the GOP-hijacked pipeline manufacturer ENRON in one brief sentence, politely skipping over how ENRON intentionally bankrupted the state of California because Arnold Schwarzenegger did not want to wait for the next SCHEDULED election to become governor. (C'mon, he's already done a whole feature on this; couldn't he have had at least a TWO-sentence reprise here?) Finally, Gibney uses his exclusive interview footage with DeLay, jailed Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, R-OH and other members of the young Republican Class of 1984 which pulled off the recent economic coup d'etat against the American middle class to lob a series of softball questions that probably had Michael Moore falling out of his chair with hysterical laughter. If only CASINO JACK had a little of Moore's humor, its running time might have seemed closer to its actual 2 hours than 5 or 6.
Ironically enough, the very same people "Casino Jack" called "m--f--ing morons" and "monkeys" within E-mails dramatically read aloud during CASINO JACK, that is, the Native Americans Gibney shows contributed $32 million in "lobbying fees" in one four-year period alone, have hired a Washington, DC, PR hack to write a book telling what a bad man Gibney is for impugning the reputation of "Saint Jack," according to a friend of mine who was contacted to help shill her book near one of the reservations Abramoff duped. Apparently, the reservation leaders in cahoots with Jack feel it is bad for their political careers for tribal members to learn they only got about $500,000 worth of actual lobbying, at the going rate, for the tens of millions they secretly funneled to the GOP shell corporations. This movie shows most of that money went for Jack and political soul mates to live the life of bazillionaires while rubbing shoulders at resorts with George W. Bush and most of the other notable Republicans of the times. All the while, Jack and his financial thugs were disparaging the natives, chortling that they were the stupidest rich people in the world. Now, to save face, these same dupes that were fleeced have to pay to have books written in an effort to paint black white (to borrow a phrase that one talking head in this movie says was Jack Abramoff's stock-in-trade).
However, the first hour of this film is devoted to a peripheral sideshow involving DeLay's go-between with the Native Americans, "Casino Jack" Abramoff, and some Asian sex slaves duped into Northern Marianas Island sweat shops, chained to their sewing machines, raped by their foremen and forced to have abortions while dozens of "investigating" evangelical Christian GOP congressmen golfed at a five-star Hyatt Regency with Jack and Tom a couple miles away.
Furthermore, Gibney skims over the relationship between DeLay, Abramoff and the GOP-hijacked pipeline manufacturer ENRON in one brief sentence, politely skipping over how ENRON intentionally bankrupted the state of California because Arnold Schwarzenegger did not want to wait for the next SCHEDULED election to become governor. (C'mon, he's already done a whole feature on this; couldn't he have had at least a TWO-sentence reprise here?) Finally, Gibney uses his exclusive interview footage with DeLay, jailed Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, R-OH and other members of the young Republican Class of 1984 which pulled off the recent economic coup d'etat against the American middle class to lob a series of softball questions that probably had Michael Moore falling out of his chair with hysterical laughter. If only CASINO JACK had a little of Moore's humor, its running time might have seemed closer to its actual 2 hours than 5 or 6.
Ironically enough, the very same people "Casino Jack" called "m--f--ing morons" and "monkeys" within E-mails dramatically read aloud during CASINO JACK, that is, the Native Americans Gibney shows contributed $32 million in "lobbying fees" in one four-year period alone, have hired a Washington, DC, PR hack to write a book telling what a bad man Gibney is for impugning the reputation of "Saint Jack," according to a friend of mine who was contacted to help shill her book near one of the reservations Abramoff duped. Apparently, the reservation leaders in cahoots with Jack feel it is bad for their political careers for tribal members to learn they only got about $500,000 worth of actual lobbying, at the going rate, for the tens of millions they secretly funneled to the GOP shell corporations. This movie shows most of that money went for Jack and political soul mates to live the life of bazillionaires while rubbing shoulders at resorts with George W. Bush and most of the other notable Republicans of the times. All the while, Jack and his financial thugs were disparaging the natives, chortling that they were the stupidest rich people in the world. Now, to save face, these same dupes that were fleeced have to pay to have books written in an effort to paint black white (to borrow a phrase that one talking head in this movie says was Jack Abramoff's stock-in-trade).