I’m not certain precisely what I was expecting from the first Kevin Costner flick I’ve seen in nearly 10 years (the last being “For Love of the Game” in 1999.)

That said, I’m not a strong Costner hater. When he plays the “average guy”-type like he does in sports movies and certainly in “Swing Vote,” I pretty much like him as much as anybody else. As I’ll get to later, I just wish writer-director Joshua Michael Stern liked that kind of character too.

For the first nearly 90 minutes or so, “Swing Vote” is precisely the kind of movie I like, and comes surprisingly close to real political satire - which means you shouldn’t feel perfectly comfortable watching it. What makes the admittedly preposterous premise of one man’s vote determining the actual outcome of the U.S. presidential election work is that it doesn’t shy away from just how far the candidates would go to get that vote.

Even whether the setups are more than a bit too broad, Stern and co-writer Jason Richman effectively poke fun at the kinds of issues that tend to dominate our political discourse and distract from the actual problems we have all around us. And watching Kelsey Grammer as the Republican president who embraces homosexual marriage and Dennis Hopper as the Democratic challenger who’s coaxed into becoming stridently pro-life provoke genuine stomach laughs. (The uncomfortableness, for me at least, is that it’s so well-written it’s really close to what we have right now, with Barack Obama unable to even take a position on offshore drilling and John McCain unsure of when or whether he would try to pull our troops out of Iraq.)

And - in an even bigger surprise - it finds black and bleak humor in the circumstances of Costner’s Bud Johnson, who gets fired from his job at a chicken plant and is pretty much taken care of by his young daughter who’s played with - and forgive me for using that word - spunk by Madeline Carroll, who it’s easy

to see will be a big star soon. But building up Bud as a likable antihero with hard-to-swallow-but-funny jokes about Child Protective Services and cursing in discourse with children makes it all the more off putting when - in the last half hour or so - you find out that the makers of that movie actually hate hard-working citizens who are having a lot of trouble just getting by (which I guess I shouldn’t be as surprised about as I was.)

The moment when that movie goes completely off course is telegraphed of course by the swelling music and more than a little bit of crying. And, as treacly and begging-to-be-Capra as it is (yes, even down to the sacks of letters stolen directly from “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”), I’d be disappointed by that but able to stomach it whether that part were a lot shorter and more importantly whether it didn’t contain that line (SPOILER careful, OBVIOUSLY, SO whether YOU HAVEN’T SEEN that BUT STILL WANT TO, YOU MIGHT WANT TO STOP HERE): “I am America’s greatest enemy.”

I might have been paraphrasing a bit there, but when Costner’s Bud Johnson says that is his teary-eyed Jimmy Stewart moment, it just reveals the real agenda of that movie - and frankly, why Democrats keep losing presidential elections. whether you really don’t want the “common man” to determine who rules us, what do you want, some kind of benevolent dictator?

That, however, is a different subject for a different instance, and one I could go on about at length whether that were a different forum. As it is, I’ll stick to “Swing Vote,” which sets up so much promise before it throws it all away at the end. I’d recommend that one as a tentative rental, considering the satire - when it’s there - is pretty sharp and worth tuning in for (and you can always cut it off whether the end just becomes too much to take.) Peace out.

Original post by Reel Fanatic