Smart, sassy, sardonic

SHELDON KIRSHNER CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS

George Hickenlooper’s Casino Jack, with a brilliant performance by Kevin Spacey, riotously traces the downfall of the savvy political lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The film, which opened in Vancouver on Jan. 28, is smart, sassy and sardonic, examining the baneful and immense influence of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. And Abramoff, a modern Orthodox American ba’al teshuvah who was born into a wealthy family in Atlantic City, was the ultimate lobbyist, a staunch Republican who ingratiated himself with members of the U.S. Congress and had direct access to the George W. Bush-era White House.

A fast-talking, charming, corner-cutting operative known for his bang-on celebrity impressions, Abramoff took a great fall when he was caught up in a scandal. Convicted in 2006 of defrauding U.S. Indian tribe casinos and corrupting public officials, he was sentenced to a six-year term in a federal prison.

Spacey, in an inspired performance, portrays the roguish, ethically challenged wheeler-dealer, who was released from jail in December 2010. Spacey has plenty of material with which to work, thanks to Norman Snider’s first-rate screenplay, which is based on real events.

Hickenlooper, who died shortly after finishing the movie, directs with wit and panache. His cynical attitude towards U.S. domestic politics is evident and, judging by the sharp and sleazy characters who inhabit Casino Jack, his representation is justifiable.

In the film, Abramoff lobbies hard for corporate interests, including U.S. garment manufacturers based in the Mariana Islands who blatantly flout American labor laws, and for Indian tribes seeking to protect their gambling interests through tax evasion.

Paid exorbitant fees to service their accounts, Abramoff is portrayed as an observant Jew and dedicated family man who bought influence in Washington by means of payoffs to well-placed politicians, including the powerful Tom DeLay, the former majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, who once described Abramoff as “one of his closest and dearest friends.”

Abramoff’s partner in crime, Michael Scanlan (Barry Pepper), a showman par excellence, shares his appetite for razzle-dazzle dealmaking.

Apart from courting pols such as DeLay, who was himself recently convicted of money laundering, Abramoff associated with Adam Kidan, a less-than-honest businessman played robustly by the actor Jon Lovitz. A disbarred lawyer who sells mattresses, Kidan is so shady that Abramoff’s long-suffering wife, Pam (Kelly Preston), urges her husband to cut him loose.

The late-Canadian actor Maury Chaykin, in a cameo, plays “Big Tony,” a rumpled Italian American hitman hired to rub out a recalcitrant Greek American gambler, who rebels when he discovers he has been fleeced by one of Abramoff’s loutish associates.

Although Casino Jack deals with the sober subject of political corruption, the film, thankfully, never takes itself too seriously. A sly sense of humor, taking aim at hypocrisy in high places, is omnipresent and thoroughly entertaining.

But the star of the show is Abramoff, who is seen alternately in a black fedora, kippah or baseball cap. He’s a likeable cad, rationalizing his work as a lobbyist as “American-style democracy in action,” finessing his allies on Capitol Hill with fat cheques and regularly intimating that tax evasion is merely a “technicality.” Abramoff also channels tainted funds into a Hebrew school he established, the Eshkol Academy and Sports Centre.

Turfed out by his employer, Abramoff – also a former movie producer best known for the low-budget shlock flick Red Scorpion – goes to Hollywood to pitch a film, a biblical epic in which Russell Crowe stars as Moses leading his people out of Egypt to the Promised Land. When his machinations unravel in scandal, he finally admits he was, perhaps, a tad too “greedy.” Consigned to prison after his friends abandon him, Abramoff is forced to admit that there might be no such thing as a “friend” in Washington.

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