Fast Food Nation (2006)

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Richard Linklater, just like David Cronenberg ( Existenze, Videodrome ) is not afraid at all of trying something new and different, and he seems to do it with surprisingly great results. In Fast Food Nation, the cover is fully blown on the issues with, well, fast food. The movie has a perfect blend of dark humor, as well as an emotional element that is missing from other films that have tried to explore this genre. It is funny, witty, smart, and even gets pretty graphic towards the end. Illegal activity is involved. The process that they have to go through to get that burger in your belly, well, let's just say it's not a pretty sight or thought. It is a very disturbing look into the fast food nation that America lives in today, and it may cause you to think twice before you order that next sandwich. In my opinion, all the issues with the fast food industry are touched in this amazingly crafted film: the illegals that accept money under the table to perform a job that is robbed from an average American just to save a pretty penny, as well as how the food is prepared. It explores the attitudes of the employees, it boldly goes into the jaw dropping "secret ingredient" of the hamburgers that are prepared for us to eat, and it even involves a safety incident that could have been prevented from getting an employee seriously injured. Fast Food Nation is not designed to be a comedy, although the humor is unquestionably there. It is a very serious film, it should be handled to the viewer as a serious matter, or you may not 'get it'. ( Spoiler follows, quit reading if you do not want it revealed ) For very sensitive viewers, I would not recommend the last fifteen minutes of the film, as it does include possibly REAL footage of animals being slaughtered for the satisfaction of our lunch at work. Fast Food Nation is a great movie for those who dare to know the truth.

Richard Linklater crafted one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time, that being A Scanner Darkly; apart from that I can admire the man's work and his intentions but I'd never call anything else he did 10 star material, Waking Life would be a 9, and Fast Food Nation is another one of those films that I thoroughly, for the most part, enjoyed but I wouldn't call it a masterpiece.It's like Soderbergh's Traffic, but about the fast food world; who works for the corporations, who supplies who with what and who tries to fight the machine that controls almost every single feasible aspect of the whole thing. All the performances are truly fantastic, Linklater knows how to handle actors and actresses, there's no doubt about that, and it flows beautifully with never a dull moment, but then that moment comes that I knew was a possibility but was hoping against.Yes, Richard, we know that the cows are treated like lifeless garbage simply for the profit of giant corporations, but showing me a cow being slaughtered will not get me on your side; I know the horrors that exist in that world so, predictably, showing me the death of a cow isn't going to impress or enlighten me...or have any effect, really.

Judging from the title, I'd expected this to be something along the lines of a fable like "Supersize Me" or some documentary on The Learning Channel teaching us a lesson on hot dogs and french fries. But no. It's am ambitious drama about the illegal importation of Mexicans to work in a meat-processing plant to service a chain of burger joints called "Mickeys." There are multiple narratives. They cover the story of a marketing agent for Mickeys (Gregg Kinnear) who finds out more about how Mickey's burger patties are produced than he cares to know. Then there are the illegal Mexicans who include the magnetic Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno from "Maria Full of Grace." Actually I got some of the Mexicans mixed up. Not Moreno or Luis Guzman, because they're familiar faces, but some of the other characters blend into one another, especially in the meat-packing plant where all of them wear the same uniforms and surgical masks. We get to know a little about some high school kids who are offended by the conditions the cattle live under, and by the fact that there excreta are dumped into ponds and eventually reach the river. There are relatively short scenes involving Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Willis.The movie is a polemic that demonstrates how money and the need to make as much of it as possible corrupts. "Everything's being taken over by machines," intones Kristofferson, an old curmudgeon who loves "the land." That's pretty much the point of the whole movie, as long as we can define "machine" broadly to include mechanisms made up of socially agreed-upon rules.I was generally sympathetic to the film's agenda but it might have been better if the script had stuck with one person and one narrative thread -- maybe Kinnear's. The script is guilty of pandering though. Mickey's Burgers corrupts, and absolute Mickey's Burgers corrupt absolutely. There's something hateful about everyone associated with Mickey's. The foreman bones all the good-looking young women. Even the guy working at the local outlet spits a ginder into one of the burgers before passing it on to the customer. (Cf., "Casino" in which the same thing was done.) And what, asks the film, can be done about it all? Nothing. The dice of the gods are loaded. The governor of Colorado received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Uniglobal Meat Packing, and the chief of the state's EPA is married to one of its executives. The high schoolers get a lecture from an experienced activist and they cut the wires surrounding the cattle pen. Alas, the cattle are too stupid to know they have been freed and they refuse to leave. That's one advantage cattle have over us. They don't suffer from ontological Angst. They don't ask themselves questions like, "What the hell am I doing, standing here up to my shakra points in my own manure?" They probably don't have any fear about their fates because they don't have the concept of "death". It comes as a surprise when one of them is beaned with an air gun, drained of blood, gutted, sawed up, slashed to pieces, and fed to happy families. The writers and director have the good taste to save this scene for the climax of the movie. I mean that sarcastically.Eating meat represents a low level of ecological efficiency. Instead of eating 100 calories worth of grass, we feed the grass to cattle, butcher them, and get 10 calories out of it. The rest of it goes to waste, in both senses of the word. Yet the movie is offensively preachy. Why must an important message be spelled out as if to a class of first graders, encased in lectures? Seeing the chunks of meat and fat being processed is enough to turn anyone into a strict vegetarian. The problem is that Homo sapiens is, and has always been, an omnivore. And the problem behind THAT problem is that there are too many Homo sapiens and their number is increasing exponentially. The more of us there are, the more pressure we must by necessity put on the natural and the economic environments. If things continue as they are, there won't be any Kris Kristofferson's boasting about protecting his land from machines. We'll all be chewed up and spit out like hamburger patties because people have to eat, don't they? The only nation on earth that seems to have this figured out is China. It doesn't take a computer to nail down the figures. An abacus will do.Something just occurred to me. Suppose you're a vegetarian restricted to a kosher diet? And in addition you were committed to organically grown food and averse to genetically engineered food, artificial additives, preservatives, and you avoided fats because they cause cancer, and salt because of concerns about blood pressure, and proteins because of the possibility of gout, and carbohydrates because they might lead to diabetes? That might ease the problem of overpopulation.

This film takes a very serious book and tries to make it into a movie but in doing so seems to lose the focus of the issues it presents. That is because it goes into several issues. The main focus is the abuse of animals and workers in making burgers for consumption at America's Fast Food Restaurants. The burgers are supposed to be contaminated with animal droppings to put it nicely.The film looks at the illegal alien problem in America in that it shows meat plant workers being UN-documented folks who come across the border. It goes into some sexual & drug problems with a supervisor having his way with many of the women at his plant. Late in the movie it shows the killing room. The film presents an inept group of teens who nearly get themselves hurt trying to help the cows.Because of the number of issues presented, the film tends to lose focus and not present any of them effectively enough. The pace of the movie is something akin to watching an entire professional golf tournament. If your into the activity, you will stick it out. If your not, you will lose your focus too.After seeing this, I get the feeling the book which I have not read, might be a stronger plot. This is like Melba toast.