Film / Reviews
Review: Miss Sloane
Miss Sloane (15)
France/USA 2016 132 mins Dir: John Madden Cast: Jessica Chastain, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mark Strong, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Lithgow, Alison Pill
Originally scheduled for an awards season release, this exploration of the dark art of political manipulation arrives, more by accident than design, during a general election campaign in which the spinners are no doubt overjoyed to hear their slogans parroted back at them repeatedly by ordinary spods during those endless TV vox pops that play such a key role in the modern echo chamber of opinion. Alas, despite a terrific central performance by Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane proves to be an awkward blend of satire and thriller, with some clunky plot twists and indigestible dollops of dialogue thrown her way by first-time screenwriter Jonathan Perera, who’s clearly OD’d on House of Cards and Veep but struggles to cram a mini-series of incident into a two-hour movie.
Chastain plays brittle, combative, workaholic Capitol Hill lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane, for whom sex and food are merely physical needs. Obsessively driven to win at any cost, she’s a free market champion who sees her role as being to anticipate her opponent’s move and play her trump card immediately after he has delivered his (it’s generally a he). How do we know this? She states as much to camera when we first meet her being coached by her lawyer for a Senate hearing chaired by an unsympathetic John Lithgow, which hints at a comeuppance. Much of the rest of the film is in flashback. After successfully seeing off a proposed tariff on palm oil from Indonesia by branding it a ‘nutella tax’ and arranging for a senator to enjoy an expenses-paid ‘fact-finding’ jolly, she’s the toast of her decidedly old-school firm. Which is why the weaselly gun lobby is eager to get her on board to help them “reframe an issue”. It seems that ladies are peculiarly resistant to the notion that Americans should be armed to the teeth at all times. They want her to “change the narrative” from women losing kids to guns to women protecting their kids with guns. But, hey – what’s this? Elizabeth has a conscience, after all. After literally laughing the trigger-happy goons out of the room, she defects to a rival ‘ethical’ lobbying firm run by the extravagantly named Rodolfo Vittorio Schmidt (Strong), taking most of her bright young team along for the ride. Now she finds herself on the opposite side of the debate, facing an equally ruthless and Machiavellian but much better funded opponent.
So how, exactly, has an ‘ethical’ lobbying firm managed to survive, much less thrive, in the swamp? It’s probably not wise to ponder that too deeply, as this is a hump we have to get over to reach the rest of the plot. Working with John Madden for the second time (she had a supporting role in The Debt), Chastain rises to the challenge of a tricky role, revealing the chinks in her character’s armour without allowing her to descend into self-loathing caricature, making her too repellent to engage our sympathies, or sanitising her monstrousness. Indeed, at one point Sloane even exploits a fragile, unwitting minion’s involvement in a mass shooting to advance her cause.
Perera is clearly alert to the danger of the film becoming a smug Hollywood liberal button-pushing exercise, but this leads to a frankly absurd late shock twist and a pat, unconvincing ending. That’s not to say it doesn’t have some strong points. The story hinges on the actions of three women, but never makes a didactic issue of gender and wisely avoids using Sloane’s penchant for male escorts as a stick with which to beat her. There’s also the suspicion that she sees taking on the gun lobby as a career-enhancing gambit rather than a matter of principle. Perera’s penchant for over-egged, self-consciously Sorkin-esque dialogue notwithstanding, Miss Sloane is at its most engrossing when it forgets about being a thriller and becomes immersed the tactics and calculations of lobbyists – or “the most morally bankrupt profession since faith healing”, as one character puts it. Who knew that public outrage after a mass shooting lasts a week per casualty, on average? In moments like this, it’s almost up there with Thank You for Smoking.
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