Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation; The Dark Side Of The American Meal was, you will recall, a coruscating exposé of madness in the meat trade covering easily exploited migrant labourers, obesity, the McLibel case, brand loyalty, ecoli and the human body parts that occasionally stray into the meat patties. It seems an unlikely source of inspiration for a feature film but if anybody might make it work, Richard Linklater, the Austin auteur behind Before Sunrise, Dazed And Confused and Slacker seems like a top pick. If you can make sense of A Scanner Darkly, then anything is possible.
Fashioning an Altmanesque daisy-chain around the mucky pathways travelled by Schlosser, Fast Food Nation attempts to ape the multi-layered, global narrative of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic. Greg Kinnear is the suit sent to a meat processing plant to determine how shit finds its way into the meat in your friendly local burger emporium. Catalina Sandino Moreno and Wilmer Valderrama are young Mexican immigrants who work in shocking conditions. Ashley Johnson is the principled young student who works part-time in her local fast food joint. Luis Guzman is the family man who smuggles Mexicans across the border.
Commendably, Mr. Linklater has worked hard to draw morally complex characters and compromises. It’s hard not to cheer for such politically minded entertainment. How often do you hear dialogue like “Right now, I can’t think of anything more patriotic than violating the patriot act”? Few films are prepared to badger you with the awful truth quite like this one.
Sadly, the human drama is less successful than the polemic. There are so many characters coming and going it’s often like reading one of the longer efforts by Dickens. Between them, Moreno and Valderrama provide the most engaging narrative thread but it’s simply not enough to carry such a sprawling entity.
During the scenes when they’re not around, one frequently yearns for the more shocking aspects of Schlosser’s book. Being even handed is great and all, but if a film promises there is shit in the meat, then we want to see shit in the meat.
Still, Kris Kristofferson and Avril Lavigne – together at last!
106mins. Cert 15a. Ppens May 4