Fast Food Nationby Anonymous
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January 14, 2008:
i have never been inside of a meat packing plant, but my father had. once was enough for him, he had taken his livestock to market. this was back in the 60's, and because of what he saw, he would not let us have any hot dogs. ever. the kill floor is disturbing, but watching how they handle the meat we eat was more disturbing. (the old sausage adage comes to mind, you would not eat it if you knew how they made it) this ugly side of meat packing has gone on for a long time. they get around it by cooking it for a long time to kill everything. and inspectors, must have some low standards, because i don't think they really try to hide how they handle the meat. thank goodness when we ate meat we where able to have it butchered at a local and known butcher shop. this movie just seemed like a reminder to me that nothing has changed, it may be worse. i hope the cable movie networks play the heck out of this, and more people see it. it really was a good movie, but disturbing, you can also see they don't care anymore about the meat than they do the workers.
Fast Food Nationby Anonymous
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March 07, 2007:
FAST FOOD NATION got such minimal response in the theater run that it seemed to go straight to DVD. The PR for the film was such that it appeared to be 'hilariously funny' (according to the DVD box cover) and as such might just provide a bit of humor after a tumultuous day of work. WRONG! This little film adapted by Richard Linklater from Eric Schlosser's frightening book is agonizingly biting and insightful: if you elect to watch it, be prepared for some ugly facts that may just produce insomnia. Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear) is a marketing strategist for 'Mickey's', a fast food chain that is highly successful in selling millions of 'The Big One' (the comparisons to the McDonald's Big Mac are not subtle!) and discovers that the meat patties have been found to grow E. coli in the lab! On an expedition to explore the validity of this problem he travels to Cody, Colorado to visit the plant that produces the meat patties for the entire national chain. And so the plethora of storylines begin: the film examines the illegal immigrants from south of the border brought in by coyotes, treated like dirt, and given jobs 'cleaning' the meat plant and working the food chopping lines and eventually the killing and slaughtering of the cattle whose housing conditions are filth personified the teenage workers who people the Mickey's chain are shown to be discontent and equally capable of planning robberies as they are of attempting to free the soon-to-be-burgers cattle the callous corporate types who cover the facts in favor of increasing monetary gain the plant workers who abuse the immigrant workers in every way possible the utter boredom of the populace of Cody and the resultant pacified response to the 'big problems' that seethe through their town. Yes, it is an expose of corruption on many levels, but the film doesn't stop there. Linklater and Schlosser are careful to include the individuals caught up in the mess and those individuals run the gamut from the immigrants who only want to find a better way of life and will subject themselves to horrors both in their trek across the border and the mistreatment in the factories to find it, to the honest men of the corporations, the ranchers, and the teenagers who try to make a stand against the many problems that overwhelm them. And that is what makes the film so moving: it personalizes rather than generalizing. The cast is huge and without exception excellent: Greg Kinnear, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, Bobby Cannavale, Ashley Johnson, Paul Dano, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzmán, Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancón, Juan Carlos Serrán, Armando Hernández, Esai Morales, Ethan Hawke, Avril Lavigne...the cast just goes on and on. Be ready for some horrendously brutal scenes not only in the killing and cutting lines but in the sexual abuses equally as tragic. This is a film that should affect the viewer, and while it is overly long at almost two hours, it is as pungent a social comment as has been made. Grady Harp
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