Fast Food Nation (2006)

This film tells the stories of people who work in the fast food industry, including top management, store manager, cashier, and illegal workers in meat processing plants. "Fast Food Nation" isn't as interesting or funny as I thought it might be. The vast number of well known actors aren't really put to good use, as they mostly have very small roles. The stories they tell are not very interesting, with the exception of the migrant workers whose tough lives and harsh working conditions should evoke sympathy. The cashier's story is rather plain. It doesn't expose the horrors of the industry either, except in the final few minutes where they show what happens in an abattoir. If shock tactic is to be used, why leave it until the last few minutes? And slaughtering animals is not unique to the fast food industry. Hence, the augments against the fast food industry is weak and hardly convincing. "Super Size Me" does a way better job at alarming people while being entertaining. This film does neither. I frankly felt bored most of the time while watching "Fast Food Nation".

Fast food chain Mickey's Burger has a hit in the Big One. Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is a marketing VP in development in their California headquarters. Independent research has found extremely high fecal count in their frozen patties and Don is sent to the Colorado meat-packer to investigate. Old-timer Rudy Martin (Kris Kristofferson) tells him about the hard truths. Harry Rydell (Bruce Willis) is their corrupt meat buyer. Amber (Ashley Johnson) and Brian (Paul Dano) work at the local Mickey's. Amber lives with her single mom Cindy (Patricia Arquette) and they're visited by activist uncle Pete (Ethan Hawke). Meanwhile illegals like Raul (Wilmer Valderrama), Coco (Ana Claudia Talancón), and Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) sneak into the US to become part of low wage workforce being exploited. Supervisor Mike (Bobby Cannavale) abuses his position by hooking up with Coco. Her sister Sylvia is not happy with the relationship and her drug use.Director Richard Linklater is adapting the scathing investigative book on the fast food industry by layering three stories on top of the material. It leaves the movie scattered, a bit flat, and too preachy to have much compelling shock factor. Linklater is caught trying to make drama while doing a documentary. I do find two of the three stories to be pretty interesting. I don't like Kinnear's character's awkward naivety. He's in the meat business but has to act dumb. Willis may as well twirl his evil mustache. There is a tale of corporate political corruption but it fails to dramatize it. Ashley Johnson is an interesting lead but her side of the story pales in comparison to the illegals working in the plant. I think that is where the movie shines and it also has the horrifying slaughter room walk-through. The movie would have been more compelling concentrating on that story.

While perhaps not a cinematic masterpiece, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation is one of the most brutal anti-capitalist films I've ever seen. It's an uncompromising take-down of the American fast food industry, following multiple narrative threads from the top to the bottom of a fictional (but all too real) restaurant chain. It exposes the exploitation of migrant and teenage labor, the chemical manipulation of ingredients, the cover-up of contaminated products, as well as unsafe working conditions, sexual assault in the workplace, and perhaps most powerfully, the torture of animals in slaughterhouses. This is a film that forces us to examine the way corporations allow nothing to stand in the way of the profits made on the backs of exploited labor and the rape of the environment.

I'm a near-vegetarian, and have been now for several years. I've been acutely aware of the of fast food factory farming, and I've educated myself in the horrors of fast food's effects on heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, soil erosion, greenhouse emissions, and the corporate greed and governmental indolence that allows it to poison the citizenry daily. In addition, I've battled my own addiction to fast food and obesity over years, and have helped my father battle his cancer through nutrition; I consider fast food a personal enemy, not just an abstract irritant.Beyond that, I'm a fan of director Richard Linklater, and his "Slacker" and "Waking Life" are two of my favorite films.In short, if there's anyone who *should* like "Fast Food Nation," it's me. But this movie is wretched disaster! Linklater takes a non-fiction book as his source material, and tries to make a story out of it, or not--maybe he tried, maybe he didn't--all I know is it didn't happen. This a wandering, meandering mess of meaningless, useless characters.There's a corporate schmoe who's just learning how unclean the meat his company produces actually is. A story almost develops around his investigation of how it's produced, but its dropped just when it seems to be going somewhere.There's a group of illegal aliens hired by a criminal meat-packing plant--but we don't care about them either. They're presented as stock figures in ensemble. The attempt at creating a story for them is pathetically feeble.Linklater trots out other almost-characters in turn, the high-school boy who fantasizes about robbing his fast-food store (but doesn't), and the girl who tries to set cows free, but these are non-events, too.I lost interest in the film early on, but kept watching as long as I could stand past that point, well past the middle. After that, I fast-forwarded, stopping occasionally to see if there was anything worth watching. There wasn't, at least, not for me.This is a crying shame. More than that, it's an infuriating shame. Linklater is nothing if not a visionary director, the cast is nothing if not talented, and the subject is nothing if not a matter of paramount importance. FFN should've been a wild, sardonic, exposé, a trip into the innards of the food industry's machine with the entertainment to keep you in your seat, and the honesty to enlighten you.Apparently, FFN *has* worked for some people, and for that I'm grateful, but I can't recommend it myself. Morgan Spurlock's wonderful, shocking, and yet enjoyable "Super-Size Me" is the one to watch, hitting all the bases that FFN should've, with wit, humor, and compassion to spare.