Rod Lurie’s The Contender is the latest to flatter us with this illusion of intimacy and while nobody could

Rod Lurie’s The Contender is the latest to flatter us with this illusion of intimacy, and while nobody could mistake it for a great movie, it is a movie of great performances.I counted three. First off is Jeff Bridges as President Jackson Evans, a Democrat who wears his authority lightly; as far as he’s concerned, the greatest perk of the job is the round-the-clock availability of the White House kitchen snacks and suppers. Bridges lends his impersonation an air of humorous command one hasn’t seen in the actor before; if anything he’s a bit too appealing (and certainly too good-looking) to be a politician. The Prez has a problem: following the untimely death of his vice-president he must cast around for a replacement, but he wants somebody whose appointment will memorialise his term of office. The rumours favour a charismatic governor, Jack Hathaway (William Petersen), who has to his credit a recent act of personal heroism; yet the president has different ideas, and selects a runner from left field ­ a woman, no less.
She is Laine Hanson (Joan Allen, in the film’s second high-definition performance), a senator who once switched sides from Republican to Democrat and is now highly regarded as a champion of women’s rights. The daughter of a former governor, she’s well-versed in Washington lore yet has the good grace to be surprised by Evans’s invitation. The role calls for an outstanding actor, and one gradually feels convinced that only Allen, with her fine-boned integrity and level gaze, could endear us to a character who at times sails perilously close to piety.

But no sooner has her selection been announced than the sulphurous whiff of scandal rises to the nostrils: photographic evidence comes to light apparently implicating Laine in a frat-house sex orgy during her freshman year. Cue panic stations in the Oval Office.This dirt has been truffled out by one Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman), a Republican congressman who resents Laine as “a cancer of liberalism” and is determined to nobble her. He’s handily placed to do it, too, being chairman of the House judiciary committee that must approve her appointment. “Politics is an extension of war”, he says, and the weapons he primes are those of smear and innuendo. So, when he publicly damns a scurrilous website that has posted the orgy photographs, he names it explicitly enough to ensure that any Net-surfer can immediately log on and satisfy their curiosity. Oldman, despite his subsequent disowning of the film, does weaselly wonders with this character, and disguises himself as artfully as Sean Penn did in Carlito’s Way. Sporting thick-rimmed specs, a receding Art Garfunkel hairdo (the explosion-in-a-mattress-factory look) and some particularly horrible brown suits, he exudes the clenched disappointment of a politician who knows he can rouse the rabble but never be loved by them.

“You’ll go down as a second-rate Joe McCarthy”, he’s told, a severe judgement on any reckoning ­ but especially harsh in coming from his own wife.How, then, does Laine face off the slings and arrows of outrageous sleaze? “Just confess,” advises the president’s senior aide Kermit Newman (Sam Elliott). (I’ve never seen that name on anyone outside of The Muppet Show,incidentally, but you live and learn.) Laine refuses to play along: she won’t answer questions about her sexual past, because she won’t acknowledge the right of any committee to ask them. “It’s beneath my dignity”, she says, and sticks to the principle even when the smut threatens to engulf her. This is the core of the film: why should she be hounded for sexual indiscretions that would be laughed off ­ or dismissed as insignificant ­ if she were a man? The example of the Clinton-Monica affair is raised during the committee hearings, and Laine neatly (if jesuitically) records her own verdict: the president was “responsible without being guilty” This even forces a laugh from sourpuss Runyon. As long as the film focuses upon this moral duplicity it maintains a decent grip. Once writer-director Lurie tries to crank up the plot there’s a noticeable slackening, and you hear yourself tutting at the slide into made-for-television sensationalism.How likely is it that Runyon’s bitter, childless wife would sneak over to Laine’s house and hand her a juicy titbit of information to throw at her husband at the next session? And how longsufferingly noble can Laine be to refrain from using it? Sometimes Lurie crafts a scene in a nicely understated fashion; there’s one enjoyable encounter in which the president tells an ambitious rookie congressman (Christian Slater) to quit badgering Laine, and warns him of the consequences if he doesn’t desist.

It’s done with a terrific show of presidential chumminess, and only afterwards do you remember the type of sandwich (shark steak) he splits with the young minnow. At other times the symbolism is flagged too keenly: following Runyon’s comparison of political justice with war, with its attendant “casualties”, the camera cuts to an overhead shot of Laine standing in all-white running kit amid a cemetery, with rows of white tombstones to point up her imminent “demise”. Not very subtle.In the final 10 minutes Lurie almost loses it completely, first with a heart-to-heart between Laine and the president that undermines the moral argument of the film, then with a rousing presidential address about “exploding into the new millennium” ­ let’s just say that Americans are likely to enjoy that rather more than anyone over here will. It’s to Jeff Bridges’ credit that the display of patriotic fervour isn’t quite as nightmarish as it might have been. The Contender, apparently an attack on sexual and political double standards, is really about the great American love affair with leadership, if not with individual leaders.