Not intense enough for the times

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This article was published 09/12/2016 (3573 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If it had been released in any other election year, the movie Miss Sloane might have impressed as a brisk, intelligent political thriller about the intrinsically dramatic field of political lobbying.

It’s not the fault of director John Madden and screenwriter Jonathan Perera that political reality became so surreal.

Madden, who directed Shakespeare in Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and thriller The Debt, is a solid, practical storyteller.

But this year, only the most baroque of stylists — say, Terry Gilliam — could have been able to do justice to a Donald Trump-infused political climate characterized by outrageous misinformation and crude showbiz bombast.

Is there room for a thinking person’s political thriller in an environment in which reactionary passions supersede reason?

Hopefully, yes.

This particular film is about not an election, but the ongoing struggle for hearts and minds in the debate over gun legislation. Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) is the weapon of choice for a high-powered Washington lobbying firm run by George Dupont (an atypically sleazy Sam Waterston).

A loner insomniac with a penchant for pharmaceutical stimulants and tailored black evening wear, she is all about winning, with little consideration for whether her blitzkrieg lobbying campaigns serve the common good.

But Elizabeth seems to hit her limit when she takes a meeting with a gun-industry honcho (Canadian actor Chuck Shamata convincingly plays a pistol-packing American archetype) who asks her to devise a campaign that will get women voters to oppose impending gun legislation.

Elizabeth not only refuses the assignment, but she goes to work for the opposing side, a conscientious lobbyist named Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong), taking her team with her.

The affronted Dupont feels compelled to “annihilate” her. And notwithstanding the icy, impenetrable exterior she shows to the world, Elizabeth proves to be vulnerable, not only due to her pill-popping but in her choice of sexual partners, specifically the studly Robert Forde (Jake Lacy) who, in his way, embodies the current phenomenon of “pay-for-play.”

Also, while Elizabeth may be on the side of the angels on this particular issue, she can’t turn off her manipulative style, even at the risk of hurting fellow campaigner Esme Manucharian (Gugu Mbathu-Raw), a woman with her own personal reasons for fighting for sane gun legislation.

While the film offers an often-startling portrayal of how lobbying campaigns work, its star is the most compelling reason to watch. Unafraid of taking on a character who is at best enigmatic and at worst unpleasant, Chastain plays the character as it lays. She makes no attempt to soften or validate a woman who, at bottom, defies our sympathy.

Usually, only men get to play such characters, and Chastain makes the most of it with a performance that reflects the go-for-broke ethos of the character.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing