cast of casino jack and the united states of money

George Hickenlooper’s film plays like one of the lesser Carl Hiaasen novels. The problem is doing a fictional account of Jack Abramoff. If you’re gonna do a fictional account of Jack Abramoff, you couldn’t find a better slimeball than Spacey and his gravitassholism. And that’s what you get with Casino Jack. I want him sneering and smugging and scowling and leering like Boris Karloff’s Grinch in Armani. I want him in fucking Swimming with Sharks. I don’t want the sensitive loony Spacey of David Gale or Pay It Forward. On top of that, Spacey is in his element when it comes to playing complete assholes. Anyone who has watched him host SNL knows what a gift the man has for mimicry. The only thing missing is a sound effects machine going boi-oi-oi-oing and an awoogah horn.

Casino Jack plays like a SNL sketch of the documentary - a wacky hijinks filled romp of extremely talented actors doing terrible imitations of the real thing. Alex Gibney, who has been churning out documentaries with the same quantity and quality of James Patterson squatting out the latest airport checkstand timewaster, fired off Casino Jack and the United States of Money - a documentary which casually rattles off like a article but still manages to capture Abramoff’s dubious sins in all their vainglory. A Bug’s Life trumped Antz, Dante’s Peak edged out Volcano, Capote outcapoted Infamous, Armageddon aerosmithed Deep Impact, Tombstone made Wyatt Earp its huckleberry - the streets of Hollywood are paved with the corpses of lesser flicks that were released within months of similar tales. If an idea is good, someone else is probably going to have it, and so you’re gonna have to be the first to the finish line with the finished product, or else you’re going to be considered derivative and lesser than.

Jack Abramoff himself would fully appreciate this, both as an unsuccessful Hollywood screenwriter/producer and as a functionally-intellectual piece of human shit. When you come across a newsworthy item that strikes your creative fancy and feeds the instinct to turn it into some sort of screenplay is that you are not the only supplicant sipping from this particular muse’s font.

Cast of casino jack and the united states of money