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Fast Food Nation Review
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
People can get themselves into some solid states of denial when it comes to things they think they can’t live without. Drive-through meals in boxes and bags is one of them. Nobody wants to think, before they sink their teeth into it, what it takes to put that juicy meat patty on a bun.
But, claiming ignorance isn’t good enough when it comes to the industry that provides one of the most prolific food items in history.
Unless there’s news about a fatal e-coli outbreak, nobody is willing to confront the back-story of the burger. Now there’s a movie that serves up the truth. Fast Food Nation is a forthright dramatization of Eric Schlosser’s provocative non-fiction book of the same name.
Co-screenwriters Schlosser and director Richard Linklater shock and sicken their viewers long before the film’s concluding blood-splattered scenes of slaughtered cows being carved up for the meat packing factory’s endlessly humming assembly lines and processing machinery.
With blunt efficiency, Linklater and Schlosser cast the story’s key players: Don, a marketing vice-president (Greg Kinnear) for Mickey’s Burgers; Amber, a burger flipper who would like to be an astronaut; and Raul and Sylvia, two of several illegal aliens who buy not freedom from subsistence living in Mexico, but demeaning, life-threatening servitude at Uni-Globe.
Don knows more about focus groups for new kiddie meals and the chemistry of his company’s artificial flavors than he does about e-coli contamination. Informed that meat from Uni-Globe, the company’s supplier, has tested positive, Don is sent out to Cody, Colorado, to check out the plant.
He’ll get sobering news from a cattle rancher (Kris Kristofferson) who believes “the machine is taking over this country” and from a Uni-Globe spokesperson (Bruce Willis) who says that “scaredy cats” should “just cook the meat.”
Meanwhile, Amber’s eyes are opening to her dead end job and an opportunity to make a statement about the cruelties of Uni-Globe; while a crippling injury to Raul at the plant forces Sylvia to play the sexual exploitation game with one of the plant’s supervisors in order to get a job. A job “pulling kidneys” from the sacks of viscera piled on the conveyor belt.
Fast Food Nation urges us to take a look at the human cost of happy meals. A compelling companion piece to the documentary, Super Size Me. Rated R for disturbing images; strong sexuality; nudity; language and drug content.
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