Silver City

US Director John Sayles has never been regarded as mainstream but he ought to be. Largely he’s not, because he operates outside of the studio system, producing intelligent films without obvious leniency toward action or emotional wrangles.

His latest film Silver City is an assured take on the US political system. Here Oscar winner Chris Cooper plays Dickie Pilager a US politician running for the Governorship in Colarado. Pilager gets asked to do a spot of fishing as part of a spin exercise. Naturally in the murk, he might expect to hook a fish or at worst, an old boot but he certainly doesn’t expect to land the big fish of all, a dead body!

Yet, this is what happens. Danny Huston playing a private investigator Danny O’Brien, gets hired by Pilager’s spin guru Chuck Raven (Dreyfus) to smooth the campaign and to look into the whys and wherefores of the dead body, and O’Brien being the tenacious type, soon find it has a history. The exposure of the body’s past takes Sayles’screenplay into a trail of fishy business that is sure to have secrecy and money at the heart of it.

Silver City is never short of being an intelligent drama mixing moments of humour into the lives of rounded politicians who as with many in this profession in real life, are sometimes forthright and honest and sometimes, conveniently less so. It will hopefully find an audience interested in seeing a film about a US campaign trail going awry. File alongside such films as Wag the Dog, The Contender, and Primary Colours.

Matt Arnoldi