Don Anderson is head of marketing for fast food chain Mickey's who is currently residing over strong sales of flagship product The Big One. When word gets out that a college project has identified high levels of faecal material within a frozen burger, Anderson gets on it to get to the bottom of it and prepare to deal if anything kicks off in the media. Meanwhile sisters Sylvia and Coco smuggle themselves across the border with a party of others, heading to a single room in a motel to await work at the local meat packing plant. At the same time, teenager Amber works the counter at the local branch of Mickey's and is beginning to feel that something is not right.
Like many others, I found the book Fast Food Nation to be a compelling read, one that was sufficient to convince me to stop eating junk food (although coincidentally a terrible bout of food-poisoning from a certain chicken place meant that the attraction of the smell was lost to me forever). It wasn't enough to turn me vegetarian but it was impacting in its exposé of safety risks, worker rights, health concerns and so on. In bringing this book to the screen, the choice was made to do it as a work of fiction and take the story structure done in films like Traffic and Syriana, where we see a topic from many views, all coming together in one overall message or point. Having seen this approach produce some strong films, I was fine with this and not at all snooty about it not being a documentary. However, the problem I had with it is that it doesn't make this transition in a success way.
The problem is not with the jump from non-fiction to fiction but rather the way it is done. You see, instead of hanging together really well and brining the viewer to the inevitable conclusion, the film just seems to follow three threads one of them sort of has an end but the other two fizzle away into nothing. This happens while the three also remain particularly separate from one another and never come together to form the message that the film is trying to deliver. In this regard actually the film also falls down because it didn't impact me at all and seemed to be unsure of quite what it was saying on various topics. The issue of working conditions is not really addressed in a way that is shocking and the film appears to rely on the gore of the kill floor to make the point but those who are surprised by the unpleasantness of the process are perhaps being a bit naïve. Likewise in the area of marketing, the film doesn't really do much to make a point about the tactics and compromises made by these corporations I expected more teeth, as it is it just fizzles away. These failures were across the board and I was surprised by just how weak it appeared in regards structure, delivery and hammering home the point. It is weakened further by making the points it does make in a very clumsy and hand-wringing fashion and it certainly never gets close to challenging the audience or revealing something about the bigger the picture.
You can see what the film could have been if you read the book and certainly the cast appeared to have been hoping for much more, given the names involved. Kinnear, Guzmán, Arquette, Willis, Kristofferson, Hawke and Lavigne all turn up and give reasonable performances, it is just a shame that the material doesn't justify them bothering. Moreno and Talancón are good in their roles and are the only people who I genuinely felt something for as characters they did well to produce the vulnerability of pretty young women in their position, open to exploitation and forced to make at least some compromises to get by. Linklater's direction of the script he co-wrote is disappointing and it is hard to put the blame too far from his door.
Overall then an interesting enough film but one that is impossible to look passed the missed potential. Nothing really hangs together or comes together at the end. Threads are just forgotten without any real point made and, while one can understand why all the stars wanted to support this film, it is a shame that the material lets them down at every turn. Interesting but is weak in every way that Schlosser's book was strong; my advice would be to read that instead.
Like many others, I found the book Fast Food Nation to be a compelling read, one that was sufficient to convince me to stop eating junk food (although coincidentally a terrible bout of food-poisoning from a certain chicken place meant that the attraction of the smell was lost to me forever). It wasn't enough to turn me vegetarian but it was impacting in its exposé of safety risks, worker rights, health concerns and so on. In bringing this book to the screen, the choice was made to do it as a work of fiction and take the story structure done in films like Traffic and Syriana, where we see a topic from many views, all coming together in one overall message or point. Having seen this approach produce some strong films, I was fine with this and not at all snooty about it not being a documentary. However, the problem I had with it is that it doesn't make this transition in a success way.
The problem is not with the jump from non-fiction to fiction but rather the way it is done. You see, instead of hanging together really well and brining the viewer to the inevitable conclusion, the film just seems to follow three threads one of them sort of has an end but the other two fizzle away into nothing. This happens while the three also remain particularly separate from one another and never come together to form the message that the film is trying to deliver. In this regard actually the film also falls down because it didn't impact me at all and seemed to be unsure of quite what it was saying on various topics. The issue of working conditions is not really addressed in a way that is shocking and the film appears to rely on the gore of the kill floor to make the point but those who are surprised by the unpleasantness of the process are perhaps being a bit naïve. Likewise in the area of marketing, the film doesn't really do much to make a point about the tactics and compromises made by these corporations I expected more teeth, as it is it just fizzles away. These failures were across the board and I was surprised by just how weak it appeared in regards structure, delivery and hammering home the point. It is weakened further by making the points it does make in a very clumsy and hand-wringing fashion and it certainly never gets close to challenging the audience or revealing something about the bigger the picture.
You can see what the film could have been if you read the book and certainly the cast appeared to have been hoping for much more, given the names involved. Kinnear, Guzmán, Arquette, Willis, Kristofferson, Hawke and Lavigne all turn up and give reasonable performances, it is just a shame that the material doesn't justify them bothering. Moreno and Talancón are good in their roles and are the only people who I genuinely felt something for as characters they did well to produce the vulnerability of pretty young women in their position, open to exploitation and forced to make at least some compromises to get by. Linklater's direction of the script he co-wrote is disappointing and it is hard to put the blame too far from his door.
Overall then an interesting enough film but one that is impossible to look passed the missed potential. Nothing really hangs together or comes together at the end. Threads are just forgotten without any real point made and, while one can understand why all the stars wanted to support this film, it is a shame that the material lets them down at every turn. Interesting but is weak in every way that Schlosser's book was strong; my advice would be to read that instead.