An Election Surprise

posted by Gareth Higgins

Watched HBO’s movie about the 2000 Presidential election debacle ‘Recount’ tonight – the DVD cover makes it look like a Hallmark movie with people we used to like – Spacey, Laura Dern, and so on – but the film is surprisingly good.  Jay Roach – of ‘Meet the Parents’ – has made a courtroom thriller that really upsets – the tale of what actually happened in Florida in November and December 8 years ago is more disturbing for seeing the titanic efforts that people undertook to see fairness done.  As with ‘W.’ a couple of weeks ago, the fact that there is a document of political nightmares in a form accessible to folk (like me) who may never read the reams of legal documents one might need to make sense of this, can only be welcomed.  ‘Recount’ reminds us that the Supreme Court halted the counting of votes in order to issue a ruling three days later that indicated that there was not enough time to count the votes.  This on top of the fact that at least 20 000 people were unfairly disenfranchised from voting, and the law that GW Bush had enacted in Texas covering electoral disputes would have almost certainly led to Gore’s victory had it been in place in Florida combined to make this one of the saddest films I’ve seen.  It’s also damn entertaining.  HBO are pretty good at this – movies that would never be greenlit for theatrical release, but on lower budget and the more focused timeframe that TV often demands end up being small but perfectly formed.  Any other made-for-TV classics you can think of, Dear Listener?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 7:30 am. It is filed under Blog, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.