No, it couldn’t actually happen, but that doesn’t stop the plot of SWING VOTE from being an irresistible idea. A presidential race comes down to one vote, and that vote belongs to a guy who isn’t quite sure who’s running for office. As a matter of fact, voting not only wasn’t his idea, it wasn’t even him who attempted to cast a ballot. It doesn’t matter. Both parties swing into overdrive to woo one befuddled voter, lavishing attention, parties, celebrities, and television commercials with higher production values than medium-budget feature films. A metaphor for national apathy? A savage indictment of the cynicism of party politics? A sharp satire about the chimera of media and politics as practiced in these United States in the 21st century? You betcha.
The befuddled guy is Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner, who also co-produced). A good old boy with a go-along, get-along attitude towards life that has landed him in a trailer park with a precocious daughter, Molly (Madeline Carroll) and a future as bleak as the scenery outside of Texico, New Mexico, where he doesn’t quite get by. Molly, on the other hand, is a solemn, no-nonsense 12-year-old who is doing the actual task of child-rearing, of herself and of Bud, an amiable man-child with a weakness for beer and goofing off who needs Molly to get him organized enough in the morning to get to work and to pack his lunch for him. Inspired by her teacher about the wonders of democracy, Molly registers Bud to vote and then makes him promise to actually show up at the polls after work. Work ends sooner than quitting time when Bud is fired and he goes on a bender. Molly, let down again by Bud and not a bit surprised by it, takes matters into her own hands. A malfunctioning voting machine, and a sharp local reporter add up to Bud suddenly becoming the owner of the most important vote in the free world when election officials determine that his was the uncounted vote and arrange for a re-vote. Bud goes from zero to hero and back again with a story arc that mirrors the media game plan that is more interested in keeping ratings up than telling a story. The idea that the guy who delivered a pizza to Bud in his trailer gets five minutes of fame on the cable news is funny not because it’s far-fetched, but rather because it is so in keeping with exactly what would probably happen.
Smart, sharp, and savvy while still being eminently likaeable, this is a film that doesn’t create stock villains and heroes. Instead, it takes on the infinitely more fascinating task of examining human nature in all its complexity. Bud is a loser, but he’s not mean-spirited. The politicians of the piece may have once been idealists, but have set that aside, more or less uneasily, in pursuit of votes. Even Molly, unimpressed by the rhetoric of the latter, and unwilling to give up on the better nature of the former, gets stuck with a lie about who actually attempted to cast the ballot, with the price of truth being separation from Bud. It also offers that most satisfying of images, the high and mighty courting the good will of their putative boss, the average voter. Okay, in this case, below-average voter.
Costner is at his most winning in a film that could just as easily have been subtitled as the education of Bud Johnson. Basking in the acclaim, lapping up the attention from the dim but upbeat, conservative President (Kelsey Grammar) as he sinks in to the leather upholstery of Air Force One or takes the stage to belt out a song at the Bud Ball thrown by the liberal presidential challenger (Dennis Hopper ), he is the everyman. It’s when it finally hits home about the responsibility his one vote has that the film makes its most dangerous turn and still succeeds and does so because of the heart Costner gives Bud. If Bud’s speech at the end of the film about the role of government is out of character in eloquence for him, it’s easy to forgive by imagining that Molly wrote it up for him inspired by reading the mail that poured into her trailer addressed to Bud from Americans begging him to force the candidate’s to address their concerns. This is a kid, after all, who put the president’s Rovian strategist (Stanley Tucci at his most Machiavellian) on the defensive armed only with a juice box and the facts. Carroll more than holds her own with Costner and company. From her first moment on screen, rousing Bud from a slobbering stupor, she establishes herself as an on-screen peer with just as much presence, just as much native talent, just as much self-possession, maybe a bit more, as any of them.
SWING VOTE shows the American political process at its worst and at its best. It’s hopeful without being naïve, inspiring without being didactic, illuminating without being alienating to any political philosophy except apathy.
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