By C. Ramsay
An incredibly stylish overview of individualistic American exceptionalism and the paranoia of established institutions. Beginning with the assassination of a U.S. senator with presidential aspirations, an event witnessed by numerous people including Warren Beatty’s investigative reporter Joseph Frady, the film builds to getting so swept up in its dualities that it begs the viewer to question their own complicity.
After the opening events of the film, Frady is shown to have had to re-attain his position of employment after having previously faced repercussions for a drinking problem, evoking the American ethos of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. That with enough introspection, application, and grind, self-actualization will be achieved—but with previous faults rendered inconsequential. The emphasis is not on the growth of a person, but their supposed reinvention. It is on their ability to adjust not because of a catalyst, but in spite of it. With any prolonged bout of introspection, though, is the risk of aggrandized self-assurance, something Frady exhibits from the start of the film to its bitter end.
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