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Bookmark this pageSwing Vote (2008)
Director: Joshua Michael Stern
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This starring vehicle for Kevin Costner is a strange fish: part folksy, Southern comedy, part Deeds-ian, pre-US election, political conscience movie, part generation-gap tear-jerker and all baloney. Costner, as gratingly ingratiating as ever, plays Bud, the ‘lovable’ ramshackle, ever-hungover, blue-collar single dad to 12-year-old verbal sharpshooter daughter Molly (Madeleine Carroll) in Texico, New Mexico, who finds the presidential election is hung on his single vote.How? Don’t ask– it’s a hanging chad kinda thing, which results in Kelsey Grammer’s overconfident sitting Republican president and Dennis Hopper’s Democratic hopeful outdoing each other both in their shameless courting of the first frightened then flattered ‘ordinary joe’ and also in the spineless policy reversals they offer in response to his homespun political appeals. Costner is the presiding spirit here, rather than director Joshua Michael Stern (who’s slated to direct our Keira in the upcoming ‘King Lear’) and must take all the blame – he shoots simultaneously for ‘wake up, America!’ inspiration and good ol’ boy charm but ends up putting both barrels through his own cowboy-booted foot.
Author: Wally Hammond
Cast & crew
Director: Joshua Michael Stern
Cast: Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Molly Johnson, Paula Patton, Nathan Lane, Stanley Tucci, George Lopez, Judge Reinhold, Charles Esten, Richard Petty, Willie Nelson, Mare Winningham, Gary Farmer full cast
Rated: 12A
Duration: 120 mins
UK Release: Sep 26 2008
US Release: Aug 1 2008
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