Last night at CAA, Movieline was granted access to the first public showing of Casino Jack, George Hickenlooper's Jack Abramoff biopic starring Kevin Spacey as the arch D.C. villain. Amid a screening room packed with agents and insiders sat stars Kelly Preston and Jon Lovitz ("Who CAA turned down!" he proclaimed, indignantly), as well as the likes of Julia Roberts and The War Room producer R.J. Cutler, all curious to see how Hickenlooper fared with the potentially tricky material. He fared very well, it turns out.
In his opening remarks, Hickenlooper was quick to point out how this wasn't a political film -- and it isn't, though all the usual suspects make an appearance -- but rather a comic tale of "white-collar thuggery. It's Goodfellas in Washington," was how he put it, capitalizing on its eccentric and -- if not exactly likable -- certainly compelling antihero. As Spacey depicts him, Abramoff is a Class-A narcissist, the kind of guy who quotes movies incessantly (he went to Beverly Hills High and produced the 1989 Dolph Lundgren triumph, Red Scorpion) and gives himself pep-talks in bathroom mirrors that end in the mantra, "I'm Jack Abramoff, and I work out." This is the kind of role that made Spacey famous -- all bulletproof self-confidence and simmering, satisfied menace; but while you may experience flashbacks to everything from Lex Luthor to Glengarry Glen Ross's weasely office manager, it's a sublimely unsavory creation all its own.
After a brief prologue in a holding cell ("What you in for?" a thug asks. "Lobbying." "That's illegal?" he responds, reasonably enough) Hickenlooper -- working off a funny, briskly paced script by Norman Snider -- dials back several years, to the Mai Tai-sipping glory days of Abramoff's elaborate shell games. We're on the Mariana islands, about halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines, where sweatshop workers cobble together blue jeans. A commonwealth nation in a political union with the U.S., the Marianas pay Abramoff's firm millions to ensure they're extended exemptions from federal immigration and labor laws. Abramoff holds up his end of the bargain, paying for House Majority Leader (and future reality TV Sambaist) Tom DeLay and his cronies to visit the islands. Palms are greased under the palms, courtside tickets are proffered, and the Mariannas get to continue sewing "Made in the USA" labels into their products without having to pay minimum wage. Everyone wins -- except the workers.
Next to Abramoff at any given moment is his right-hand sleaze, Michael Scanlon -- played by Barry Pepper, who, along with Spacey and Lovitz, provides one of the three terrific performances at the center of Casino Jack. If Abramoff is the cool-headed brains of the operation, Scanlon is its engine, drawn by Pepper as a sweaty, babbling portrait of killer greed who drinks red wine with ice cubes, fucks Lear Jet stewardesses behind his too-savvy girlfriend's back (Twilight series refugee Rachelle Lefevre), and is forever on the lookout for the next cash-generator to subsidize his high-flying lifestyle. ("You still haven't paid off your student loans," Abramoff points out, after Scanlon mentions he's just made a down payment on a multi-million dollar home.)
The two nevertheless enjoy a highly functioning partnership, speaking to each other in their own jittery, racist patois (the Native Americans they plan to swindle out of gaming funds are all "chiefs" and "monkeys"). Their crooked system works, somehow, and before long they become the toast of K Street -- "superlobbyists," the media dub them -- if raising the suspicions of the Post reporters they rub shoulders with at happy hour. As the kickbacks roll in, Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, begins to fulfill his dreams of opening a private Hebrew school, and playing restaurateur. His wife, played by Preston, is highly suspicious; ultimately, her good judgment is clouded both by her love and devotion to her husband, and his mastery of sweeping the obvious under the carpet. Until a Madoff movie surfaces, this is the closest we'll get to understanding why Ruth stood silently by her man.
Endgame approaches with the shadiest deal of all: an attempt to buy a fleet of seedy cruise line casinos owned by Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, a Greek, self-made millionaire living in Miami. It's then that Jon Lovitz appears, playing Adam Kidan, a bankrupt mattress salesman with ties to the mob, who Abramoff lures into the negotiations. Lovitz, an underrated comic actor (see Rejections: CAA, above), turns Kidan into a lowlife gem -- a scene-stealing shlemiel who can elicit big laughs with nothing but a pained expression after a ballpoint-pen attack. Also doing superb work here is Maury Chaykin, offering a master class in character acting playing old school New York mobster James "Pudgy" Fiorello, like some overgrown, lugubrious toddler looking to flatten other kids' sandbox castles.
The film screens later this week for potential buyers. Spacey's award-caliber performance alone makes it a good buy, but Casino Jack has a lot more going for it than that. It succeeds, I think, where The Informant did not, painting a story of true crime and delusional grandeur in broadly entertaining strokes. But beneath the laughs lies a pointed and timely indictment -- not just of crooked, Bush-era backroom machinations, but of the scrupulously bankrupt avarice that would eventually topple our economy. It's a winner.