Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation has the dramatic flatness and willful lack of personality of some documentaries -- or at least how Linklater thinks a documentary should be. The movie nonetheless feels like both a work of investigative journalism and an immense human-interest story, veering into muckraking, horror, teen comedy, and what passes for "Twilight Zone" science fiction.

Through it all, Fast Food Nation never really preaches to viewers, it just lays ideas out there. In that respect, it's every bit a talky, philosophical Richard Linklater movie.

Fast Food Nation picks up, and drops off, various members of its cast, sometimes without a satisfying resolution. But its final scenes, inside a real working meatpacking plant, on the killing floor, are brutally to the point.

It's a bold proposition, and the resulting film has some powerful moments and strong performances, but it fails to be an involving or satisfying drama, and it's not half as effective as the book in creating outrage over what junk food is doing to us.

A gross and engrossing attempt to humanise a hot-button subject, using a star-sprinkled cast to reveal some unpalatable truths.

Dispiriting, unsubtle and unpleasant.

If I wanted to spend $10.75 making myself sick, I'd buy a bottle of cheap tequila.

Fast Food Nation is a horrific and horrifically engrossing movie about such political notions as worker exploitation, fast food practices, corporate greed and limitations of freedom. It's interesting for sure, but as direct entertainment it makes for harrowing and uncomfortable viewing. Which is exactly the point, I suppose.

Linklater decides to film his complaint following a double track. It follows the path of animal meat showing the immaculate asepticity of the spaces in which it is slaughtered but also the choice of waste parts aimed at the production of hamburgers. But, and this strengthens the complaint, it also follows the path that human 'flesh' (the clandestine workers) is forced to travel between humiliations, physical risks and the need for women to bow to the wishes of males who can decide their future. A very hard film, therefore, which however attenuates its force of denunciation due to an excess of sub-stories that slow down its pace, ending up in some cases by being channeled into dead ends. A film with enormous potential but, thanks to a sometimes good and sometimes deceptive screenplay, it does not fully express it.

Good movie! Good story line and gives you something to think about for sure. Greg K is great again but one surprising performance from none other than Bruce Willis. Here is a guy whom I typically dislike in movies giving a great performance as a sales account jerk. Totally worked for me and very believable.... perfect role for him. It's too bad he doesn't take these smaller type of roles more. Give up the main role action hero Bruce... it doesn't work for you anymore and has been pounded into the ground!!