Red Rock West made me feel a little sad: I had an obsolete edition of a well acted, but poorly formatted film on the brink of vanishing from collective memory. 2000's The Contender made me furious: here was a near masterpiece I had never heard of. Stumbling upon it by mere chance, "where have you been all my life?" was the question I kept asking after watching a used copy from the original release cycle. The threat of extinction that this film faces makes me upset, and the negligence shown to this film seems like a crime against art. How A Woman Under the Influence gets a Blu Ray remaster issued by the Criterion Collection, and The Contender is completely ignored, is beyond me.
What makes this film so special? It has a high degree of relevance. Audiences should find that the tactics of the Washington smear campaign have not changed between 2000 and 2024. In fact, for all the hideousness of the discreditation we see in the modern political arena, the turn of the century showed a subtler warfare. This fictional story tells of President Evans (Jeff Bridges) needing to the fill the vacancy left by the sudden death of his Vice President. In the last year of his term, he wants to go out on a high note: nominating the first ever female Vice President in Senator Laine Hanson (Joan Allen). Slimy Republican Congressman Runyon (Gary Oldman) is trying to block her confirmation in order to install Virginia Governor Hathaway (William Peterson), who heroically saved a woman from drowning when her car crashed. Hathaway starts to play dirty: releasing camcorder footage of a drunk Hanson performing oral sex on a frat boy back in her college days. She offers her resignation, but Evans, who had appeared aloof up to this point in the story, brings in evidence from the FBI that Hathaway paid to have the woman crash her car so he could conveniently save her. And in a startlingly heroic and righteous final speech by Evans to a joint session of Congress, he calls out Runyon, who cowardly tries to sneak out of the proceedings. He calls for an immediate confirmation vote, right then and there, and though we don't know the exact number of yay votes, the raucous applause implies that she is comfortably confirmed.
Joan Allen was nominated for Best Actress, and Jeff Bridges for Best Supporting Actor. Though I am usually skeptical of Academy nominations, I feel this was well deserved compensation in light of the film's box office failure. Bridges does a fantastic rope-a-dope, spending the first half of the film delivering monologues on the benefits of shark steak sandwiches that can be made on demand (perks of being the President), before pulling the rug out from his political competition in the second half. Allen carries herself with a quiet dignity; smartly reacting to the camcorder video while simultaneously expressing the frustration that this moment from 30 years ago is going to derail everything she worked for. The twist that the Governor set up the crash was so deceptively simple I didn't see it coming. Oldman is perfect as an aging, out of touch politician who will put his own agenda before the country's (sound familiar?) Really, the only thing holding me back from awarding The Contender a perfect 4 star rating is a labored scene where a military recruit goes up to Sam Elliot's Chief of Staff with: "I know this may be out of line, but..." gives a two minute spiel, and he replies with the cliche: "you're right, that was absolutely out of line" (eye roll). There were some questions of how much the script was changed during pre-production to suit a liberal agenda, with conservative pundits firing claims on their radio show that the portrayal of Congressman Runyon was a sign that the liberal media was at it again. Based on what had happened with the Monica Lewinsky scandal two years earlier, and the misogynist treatment toward future politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris, I don't feel this is a biased script. In fact, like the poster says, I think this is a "first rate thriller." And it would be a shame if it were lost to the annals of history.
Rating: *** 1/2 out of 4
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