KEVIN Costner's at his best when playing rough-around-the-edges blue-collar Americans, so it's odd that a film that plays entirely to that strength shouldn't work.
Swing Vote's almost smart hook is that a voting irregularity results in the fate of
the next presidential election falling to beer-swilling, recently fired factory worker Ernest "Bud" Johnson (Costner).
A rube and a laughing stock, he suddenly finds himself – along with his whip-smart daughter (Madeline Carroll) – with the ear of both the President (Kelsey Grammer) and his Democratic challenger (Dennis Hopper), both of whom are forced to scrap their campaigns to court his single vote.
Aiming for the misty-eyed sensibility of Frank Capra, the film works far better when it momentarily morphs into serious drama and Costner starts acting like a real person instead of a caricature.
Alas, the odd glimmer of intelligence isn't enough to make this gossamer-light political satire worth endorsing, particularly since no-one involved seems aware that the real joke is not that the fate of a US election might one day be decided by a guy like Bud, it's that a guy like Bud has actually been running the country for the past eight years.
The full article contains 224 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
