If I could give this a zero, I would. I was a fan of Spitzer's early in his purported campaign against Wall Street. As a New Yorker, I had followed his silk purse career from the beginning.
What the writer director does here is imply, use innuendo and ultimately avoid the bottom line single issue. Eliot Spitzer hired prostitutes and flew them all over the country, nay, the world, all the while prosecuting the same behavior in others. Worse, he was hiring young women, the same age as his own daughters. A truly sleazy individual.
But it goes much farther than that. It totally ignores all of the financial shenanigans of Eliot and his father, which would have derailed any national run for office. His father, one of the largest real estate developers in NY, gifted Eliot numerous apartments which provided most of his multimillion dollar income. His father even paid the gift tax on it.
Bernard also loaned Spitzer's campaigns millions of dollars, $5Million +, and worse, made enormous donations to the campaigns of those who were his son's "allies".
That is almost unimportant next to the real issues. Spitzer's supposed campaign against Wall Street. In most of the cases that he made sure to hold press conferences when issuing subpoenas, he ended up settling for virtually nothing, or never even pursuing in court.
Worse, he lost the most high profile prosecutions he pursued, including the one showcased in the movie against Dick Grasso of the NYSE (never mentioned in the movie that Grasso was vindicated in Federal Court) and was shown to have been nothing more than a personally vindictive, wildly undisciplined attorney general.
By his own admission in the film, again, brushed over by the filmmaker, he admits to telephone calls to the people he was pursuing telling them they were 'dead' or going to be 'steamrolled' or "at war". What kind of prosecutor does such things? Ultimately, the director through innuendo and editing, implies that there was a conspiracy to bring Spitzer down. He even uses pro Spitzer talking heads to imply that Spitzer would be the only "John" to be prosecuted under the Mann Act (I guess he never heard of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson) and then immediately quickly brushes past the fact that Spitzer, in fact, was NOT prosecuted. He then again uses a talking head to claim that the entire investigation was a set up simply to leak Spitzer's involvement with the Emperor's Club prostitution service to the NY Times. Huh? The most liberal newspaper in the country, which almost singlehandedly had made his career was now the demon of his destruction? What he completely ignores are the simple facts of the case. There was not a single notice of an illegal transaction noticed by the Feds, but many transactions designed to specifically skirt the federal law that requires ANY cash transaction of $10K or more to be reported (some reports said dozens of such transactions). Spitzer repeatedly made transactions of $5K at a time to pay his $10K/day hooker. The law that was designed primarily to ensnare money launderers as a result of the cocaine wars of the 1980's is what caught him.
The size of the this ring, whose owners were sent to federal prison, is demonstrated by the fact that when they were arrested in their apartment, they had more than $1 Million in cash in a safe in their bedroom. This was no small time hooker service, but a major international escort service which included members of the royal family as clients - oh yeah, I guess since THAT came out, it wasn't really an attack just on Spitzer - another fact noted, and whitewashed by the director.
Did Spitzer make enemies? Of course. But the idea that Hank Greenberg or Ken Langone brought him down is not only foolish, it's insulting. Were they the ones hiring the hookers? The director also compares Spitzer to fallen pols like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich and others who engaged in extramarital affairs. As bad as they were, they were NOT committing crimes and certainly NOT at the same time they were specifically empowered to prosecute the very crimes they were committing.
That Spitzer has any credibility is a sad reflection of the current state of the body politic.
Spitzer is a brilliant individual with an extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder.
Had the filmmaker used the forum to dissect the hubris that ultimately brings down so many of these types, he might have added to the conversation.
Instead, this film looks like it was bankrolled, as Eliot's whole career was, by his father.
What the writer director does here is imply, use innuendo and ultimately avoid the bottom line single issue. Eliot Spitzer hired prostitutes and flew them all over the country, nay, the world, all the while prosecuting the same behavior in others. Worse, he was hiring young women, the same age as his own daughters. A truly sleazy individual.
But it goes much farther than that. It totally ignores all of the financial shenanigans of Eliot and his father, which would have derailed any national run for office. His father, one of the largest real estate developers in NY, gifted Eliot numerous apartments which provided most of his multimillion dollar income. His father even paid the gift tax on it.
Bernard also loaned Spitzer's campaigns millions of dollars, $5Million +, and worse, made enormous donations to the campaigns of those who were his son's "allies".
That is almost unimportant next to the real issues. Spitzer's supposed campaign against Wall Street. In most of the cases that he made sure to hold press conferences when issuing subpoenas, he ended up settling for virtually nothing, or never even pursuing in court.
Worse, he lost the most high profile prosecutions he pursued, including the one showcased in the movie against Dick Grasso of the NYSE (never mentioned in the movie that Grasso was vindicated in Federal Court) and was shown to have been nothing more than a personally vindictive, wildly undisciplined attorney general.
By his own admission in the film, again, brushed over by the filmmaker, he admits to telephone calls to the people he was pursuing telling them they were 'dead' or going to be 'steamrolled' or "at war". What kind of prosecutor does such things? Ultimately, the director through innuendo and editing, implies that there was a conspiracy to bring Spitzer down. He even uses pro Spitzer talking heads to imply that Spitzer would be the only "John" to be prosecuted under the Mann Act (I guess he never heard of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson) and then immediately quickly brushes past the fact that Spitzer, in fact, was NOT prosecuted. He then again uses a talking head to claim that the entire investigation was a set up simply to leak Spitzer's involvement with the Emperor's Club prostitution service to the NY Times. Huh? The most liberal newspaper in the country, which almost singlehandedly had made his career was now the demon of his destruction? What he completely ignores are the simple facts of the case. There was not a single notice of an illegal transaction noticed by the Feds, but many transactions designed to specifically skirt the federal law that requires ANY cash transaction of $10K or more to be reported (some reports said dozens of such transactions). Spitzer repeatedly made transactions of $5K at a time to pay his $10K/day hooker. The law that was designed primarily to ensnare money launderers as a result of the cocaine wars of the 1980's is what caught him.
The size of the this ring, whose owners were sent to federal prison, is demonstrated by the fact that when they were arrested in their apartment, they had more than $1 Million in cash in a safe in their bedroom. This was no small time hooker service, but a major international escort service which included members of the royal family as clients - oh yeah, I guess since THAT came out, it wasn't really an attack just on Spitzer - another fact noted, and whitewashed by the director.
Did Spitzer make enemies? Of course. But the idea that Hank Greenberg or Ken Langone brought him down is not only foolish, it's insulting. Were they the ones hiring the hookers? The director also compares Spitzer to fallen pols like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich and others who engaged in extramarital affairs. As bad as they were, they were NOT committing crimes and certainly NOT at the same time they were specifically empowered to prosecute the very crimes they were committing.
That Spitzer has any credibility is a sad reflection of the current state of the body politic.
Spitzer is a brilliant individual with an extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder.
Had the filmmaker used the forum to dissect the hubris that ultimately brings down so many of these types, he might have added to the conversation.
Instead, this film looks like it was bankrolled, as Eliot's whole career was, by his father.