Kevin Spacey Movie:

Editorial Review:
At the height of the 2000 election season, CBS anchor Dan Rather quipped, "The presidential race is crackling like a hickory fire." Director Jay Roach (Austin Powers) recaptures that blaze in his smart HBO docudrama about the thriller in Palm Beach County. Written by actor Danny Strong, Recount bounces between the Sunshine State, Gore's Tennessee headquarters, and Bush's Texas stomping grounds. Gore adviser Ron Klain (an excellent Kevin Spacey) provides a privileged window into those weeks when the American public first became familiar with obscure terms like "hanging chad." (Since Klain has an ax to grind with the vice president, neither he nor Gore appear completely heroic.) First, the Democratic candidate pulls ahead; then he falls behind. Just as he prepares to concede, Klain's colleague, Michael Whouley (Denis Leary), spots an anomaly in the vote count, and the race continues. Enter eccentric Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (Laura Dern, a certain Emmy nominee), who orders a recount, and former Secretaries of State Warren Christopher (John Hurt) and James Baker III (Tom Wilkinson), who oversee a process that ends up in the Supreme Court (where Ed Begley Jr.'s David Boies represents Gore). Produced by the late Sydney Pollack, who originally intended to direct, Recount skillfully integrates news footage with dark comedy, most provided by the foul-mouthed Whouley and Bush adviser Ben Ginsberg (Bob Balaban), who's still livid about JFK's victory over Nixon. If the Democrats come across as more sympathetic, the Republicans come across as more colorful--and strategically effective. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Recount [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Taking the count...
2009-11-03 - GOP members of Amazon wave an imperial hand and call this film "fair," on balance. That is missing the point. This was a catclysmic national tragedy the result of which many people are dead today -- leaders do matter. If 20,000 African-Americans were not thrown off the rolls, if punch card machines were not counted, bizzarely enough, by automated machines which tended to push the chads back in, if thousands of people were not confused by a ballot into voting for a candidate they despised (Pat Buchanan, who took their side), the world would be a very different one today. As usual, the tragedy was enabled by the dithering of stupid Democrats, who scared away at the first band of staged protesters, or first critical article in The New York Times.

I will say that the mimicry of the Florida atmosphere, the media circus, the direct excerpts from the opinions of the court, and the dead on impressions of Christopher, Boies, Harris (from scene one a nincompoop) and Baker are eerie. Even if a few scenes have been thrown in for dramatic effect, no one is a monster and all are scrambling for self-interested political gain. It happens that right was on the Democratic side. They had no clue how to use it. (Change, much?)

Taking the longer view, the very narrow establishmentarian means and methods flashed by both parties (corporate media, politicized courts, hired protesters, some vague abstraction called the hoi polloi out there, for which this is all being done for), go a long way toward explaining the mess we are in. Find a decent 3rd party, because the parties who brought us this, the Iraq/Afganistan wars, the bailout and the meager "recovery" will not do...much longer.

should be rated R
2009-10-05 - Recount was an interesting movie, however, there should have been a rating on it as the "f" word was used repeatedly in it. The movie itself helps one to see that justice can still be manipulated even at its highest level where one would think that fair treatment would be more likely to happen.

Very entertaining, well done film - the controversy is overblown.
2009-09-29 - The basics of this election are this: There were "three" votes by the U.S. Supreme Court in this matter that totaled in sum 21-6 in favor of Mr. Bush as follows: First, the Court voted 9-0 to "reverse" the Florida S.C.'s November 21 ruling to
extend the deadline to submit votes from November 14 to November 26 - thus the whole vote counting fiasco was moot; Second, the Court voted 7-2 to reverse on an "equal protection" basis the Florida S.C.'s December 8th ruling ordering a statewide hand recount of undervotes; Third, the 5-4 ruling was the outcome of the first two rulings. The Florida Supreme Court had changed the "election rules" after the election. It is the Florida legislature that determines the election
rules not the Court after the election was already held. All post election media
studies determined that Bush would have won anyway. In fact, the Palm Beach Post
reported that in Miami-Dade County, Bush would have picked up 6 votes over Gore and this is one of four heavily Democrat counties Gore chose to have a recount in saying "that result would have been a hard blow to Al Gore's hopes of claiming the presidency in a recount."

Florida Voters Revisted
2009-09-19 - Outstanding performances by Kevin Spacey and Tom Wilkinson. The story of the 2000 presidential election vote count in the State of Florida with all the problems and resulting political maneuvers and legal battles makes for a compelling drama.

Watch it just for Laura Dern alone!
2009-05-18 - HBO movie about the Florida voting recount in the 2000 presidential election. Especially hard to watch if you're a Democrat, it stirs up frustrations that you thought you had long buried and forgotten. Given the apparent dryness of the material, it's surprising how well this zips along, and with a good balance of comedy and drama. Special marks to Laura Dern for her incredible portrayal of Katherine Harris!