Fast Food Nation Release Date: November 17, 2006 Starring: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Wilmer Valderrama, Ana Claudia Talancon, Greg Kinnear, Bobby Cannavale Directed by: Richard Linklater
Fast Food Nation poses an interesting critical conundrum: at one point does a film's ambition make up for its dramatic clumsiness? As a piece of cinematic storytelling, Richard Linklater's latest, which is based on Eric Schlosser's best-selling expose of the fast-food industry, is often contrived, overwritten, and annoyingly self-satisfied. At the same time though, the film makes a number of galvanizing points about the way we live now. In bringing Schlosser's book to the big screen, Linklater isn't just out to expose the dirty secrets of the fast food industry. Instead, he uses that industry as a microcosm for the country itself. The film's depiction of a McDonald's-ized America — where the citizens simply accept what is served to them by employers, politicians and counter jockeys — is potent enough to make you think twice about ducking into your local franchise eatery for a quick bite.
Employing the multi-character tapestry approach to filmmaking that's so trendy lately, Fast Food Nation contains three main storylines, each of which comes with its own bushel of subplots. The first revolves around Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear), the new marketing executive at Mickey's, America's fastest-growing fast-food chain. Don's career is flying high because his idea, a new burger subtly called "The Big One," started selling like gangbusters. His boss confides that those mega-sized patties have been found to contain a whopping amount of containments, including feces. He sends Don to his beef supplier's headquarters in Cody, Colorado to find out, as he bluntly says, "Why there's shit in the meat."
Meanwhile, to the south of Don, a Coyote is leading a Mexicans north across the border with the promise of employment at the same Colorado slaughterhouse. Among this group are married couple Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and Raul (Wilmer Valderrama...yes, that Wilmer Valderrama) as well as Sylvia's sister, Coco (Ana Claudia Talancón). Upon reaching Cody, Raul and Coco go straight to work at the abattoir, while Sylvia finds work as a maid at a local motel. The final story strand involves Amber (Ashley Johnson), an overachieving high-schooler who works at her local Mickey's franchise to save money for college. While Amber isn't thrilled to be asking people if they want fries with that, her friends, including the sullen Brian (Paul Dano), help make the time pass by faster.
What sets Fast Food Nation apart from other recent multi-character studies like Crash,Bobby, and Babel is that Linklater doesn't set up a single incident that ties all the story strands together. In fact, Don, Amber, Raul and Sylvia rarely come into contact with each other, which is a relief after last year's Best Picture winner where the "random" connections between all those angsty Angelinos became laughable after awhile. The characters in Fast Food Nation are instead united by theme; their individual story arcs are designed to show how each of them has surrendered an important part of themselves by toiling for this corporate giant. Even Sylvia, who at first refuses to work at the plant, eventually finds herself on the killing floor in a graphic sequence that was shot in an actual slaughterhouse. The last time we see her, she's being instructed how to rip the kidneys out of piles of steaming feces-filled cow intestines by her bored co-worker. It's hard to know what's sadder about this scenario — the horrified look on Sylvia's face or the knowledge that, eventually, she'll learn to get used to it.
Too bad the film doesn't end on that image. Instead, Linklater tacks on a coda that's designed to bring the film full circle, but instead feels smug and on-the-nose. That's par for the course in a movie that also features a sequence where a group of environmental activists tries to free a herd of about-to-be-butchered cows, only to watch said livestock mill about their pen, refusing to head for the open range (Gee, ya think the cattle are supposed to be a metaphor for something?). Linklater has injected social commentary into a number of his previous films, but he's never worn politics this openly on his sleeve. It's not exactly a flattering look for him or for the film. Still, it would be easier to dismiss his moralizing about this "fast-food nation" if one didn't feel that, deep down, he's right.
