I can give two reasons why I watched "Power": Sidney Lumet and Denzel Washington. Sidney Lumet has directed superb movies such as: "12 Angry Men," "The Pawnbroker," "Serpico," "Murder on the Orient Express," "The Verdict," and others. Denzel Washington needs no introduction.
There were two reasons I wanted to avoid the movie: the 5.7 rating and Richard Gere. I'm not a Gere fan. But the two positives I thought would outweigh the two negatives. They didn't.
Richard Gere played Pete St. John, a political campaign strategist who had an 85% success rating. He has no allegiances. If the money is right he'll help get the candidate in the office of his/her choosing. Yet, he apparently had allegiances after all. He couldn't bring himself to fully represent Jerome Cade (J. T. Walsh) who was running for a senate seat in Ohio vacated by Hastings (E. G. Marshall).
The entire plot was unmoving. The undercurrent of it was that Cade's anti-solar power stance would further benefit the Arabs, but it was propped up so flimsily. We got one scene of Billings (Denzel Washington) in a limo with an Arab royal talking about oil and candidates and from that we were supposed to be appalled. I wasn't appalled. To me it looked like Washington D. C. business as usual. Even the tapped phones didn't add any suspense. There was nothing to be garnered from St. John's conversations and there never seemed to be any fear of harm.
The whole affair was weak which made the final outcome equally weak. When Cade lost the senate seat and Westwood won my response was, "eh." Was this a win for the people? Was this a win for renewable energy? Who knows because we knew nothing about Westwood and furthermore we're talking about the senator of Ohio. That's one senator in one state, hardly enough to make a dent in the status quo. He was going to be a freshman senator at that which meant no committees, no special assignments, no clout whatsoever.
Because Sidney Lumet has such a lengthy resume of gold as does Denzel, I'll blame the failure of this movie on Gere and the writer David Himmelstein.
Someone has to take the blame.
There were two reasons I wanted to avoid the movie: the 5.7 rating and Richard Gere. I'm not a Gere fan. But the two positives I thought would outweigh the two negatives. They didn't.
Richard Gere played Pete St. John, a political campaign strategist who had an 85% success rating. He has no allegiances. If the money is right he'll help get the candidate in the office of his/her choosing. Yet, he apparently had allegiances after all. He couldn't bring himself to fully represent Jerome Cade (J. T. Walsh) who was running for a senate seat in Ohio vacated by Hastings (E. G. Marshall).
The entire plot was unmoving. The undercurrent of it was that Cade's anti-solar power stance would further benefit the Arabs, but it was propped up so flimsily. We got one scene of Billings (Denzel Washington) in a limo with an Arab royal talking about oil and candidates and from that we were supposed to be appalled. I wasn't appalled. To me it looked like Washington D. C. business as usual. Even the tapped phones didn't add any suspense. There was nothing to be garnered from St. John's conversations and there never seemed to be any fear of harm.
The whole affair was weak which made the final outcome equally weak. When Cade lost the senate seat and Westwood won my response was, "eh." Was this a win for the people? Was this a win for renewable energy? Who knows because we knew nothing about Westwood and furthermore we're talking about the senator of Ohio. That's one senator in one state, hardly enough to make a dent in the status quo. He was going to be a freshman senator at that which meant no committees, no special assignments, no clout whatsoever.
Because Sidney Lumet has such a lengthy resume of gold as does Denzel, I'll blame the failure of this movie on Gere and the writer David Himmelstein.
Someone has to take the blame.