The Contender

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * * )

A political drama smart enough to satisfy the most demanding fan of The West Wing, the film which earned an Oscar nomination for Joan Allen in the title role seems at times like an apologia for the philandering Bill Clinton, and is hampered by some ostentatious climactic oratory which may be intended ironically but ends up hokey.

But it's so cleverly plotted and driven by performances of such ferocious intelligence that it's easy to forgive these lapses.

Allen plays Laine Hanson, a liberal Ohio senator whom President Jackson Evans (Bridges) wants to elevate to vice-president, ahead of a Virginia senator rival who has attained the status of national hero after trying to save a drowning woman.

Hanson's candidacy becomes mired in scandal when the reactionary schemer Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman), who chairs the Congressional committee conducting the confirmation hearings, discovers some extraordinarily compromising old college snapshots of the contender and embarks on a campaign to throttle the life out of her aspirations.

Much of the film is a battle of wills between Hanson and Runyon as she attempts to remain aloof from the "sexual McCarthyism" and the White House is forced into some serious spin-doctoring. But two great plot twists elevate the film above the run-of-the-mill Washington television drama which it superficially resembles.

A one-time film critic who predicted Titanic would be a bomb, Lurie directs with more competence than brilliance. He takes us in close to his characters - many shots are full-face closeups in which a tic or a sheen of sweat says more than the lines, and he effectively interleaves television images of events unfolding in the film's own "real" time.

He's abetted by performances which make the movie something rather special. The perennially underrated Bridges makes a wonderful president, a sleekly self-serving but plausible political operator, who is perpetually snacking (there's a great running gag in which he tries to come up with an order that White House chefs can't fill) and Allen conjures a subtle and complicated characterisation from a part which could have been simply a beast of burden for the film's ideas.

But it's Oldman, an Englishman who has added a touch of class to every role he's picked up in Hollywood, who turns in the film's real Oscar-worthy performance. Virtually unrecognisable behind horn rims, he is a sallow, hollow figure whose very hair and skin seem to be rotting around him, an index of the decay within. In a brief peek into his life, we see the private sadness that drives his public self and it's a measure of Oldman's skill that we feel so ambivalent about the man who's meant to be the villain.

Cast: Joan Allen, Gary Oldman, Jeff Bridges

Director: Rod Lurie

Rating: M (sex scenes, offensive language)

Running time: 125 mins

Screening: Village Queen St, Rialto, Bridgeway.