The Candidate | | Cast : | Robert Redford, Peter Boyle | | Director : | Michael Ritchie | | Studio : | Warner Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, HiFi Sound, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 1972 | | DVD Released Date : | September 15, 1998 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | September 28, 2004 | | Summary | Stilted, drippy, outdated, and worst of all REDFORD | Content
 | Okay people, Robert Redford is an ATROCIOUS actor. He is a Hormel hamslice prancing around as a vapid left-wing pooh bah. Witness the scene in this film when he is "tired" and answers the phone. Ha! Okay, but on to the movie.
The Candidate is apparently for those legions of people out there in America who think they're good enough, they're strong ehough, and gosh darnit they want to make a difference! Oh, but politics is so evil! Well, I would never want a politician like this wimpus calling the shots for me or my family. This film squanders what could have been an insightful look at political ambition, instead Reds-baby is, as always, doofus #1. It helps that the evil Republican is nothing more than a windbag spouting off empty rhetoric. HINT TO FILMAKERS: Movies are more dynamic when there's an interesting, well-defined villian.
But, as a political junkie there still was enough here to keep me mildly interested, if only because it's a great portrait of the McGovern-era vapidity of the Left. However, this film fails not because of any political predisposition, for it doesn't even begin to explore the origins of political power. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 07, 2004 | | Summary | EXCELLENT POLITICAL FLICK | Content
| Robert Redford was behind the entertaining political movie "The Candidate" (1972), which goes a long way towards explaining how the game works. This film is really not a liberal one, which is what makes it worthwhile even after 30 years. It is supposed to be based on Edmund "Jerry" Brown, former California Governor Pat Brown's son. Jerry Brown at the time was a youthful Secretary of State who would go one to two terms as Governor. He was a new kind of pol, attractive, a bit of swinger who dated rock star Linda Rohnstadt, and representative of the Golden State image of the 1970s. They called him "Governor Moonbeam".
Redford plays the son of the former Governor of California, played by Melvyn Douglas. The old man is old school all the way, having schmoozed his way up the slippery slope through implied corrupt deals with labor unions and other Democrat special interests. Redford is a young man who played football at Stanford and is now a social issues lawyer of the pro bono variety, helping Mexicans in Central California. Peter Boyle knew him at Stanford and is now a Democrat political consultant who recruits Redford to run for Senator against Crocker Jarman, an entrenched conservative Orange County Republican. Jarman could be Reagan, but he is as much a composite of the traditional Republican: Strong on defense, down on affirmative action and welfare, a real "up by the bootstraps" guy who emerged from the Depression and World War II to make up our "greatest generation."
The film does an about-face on perceptions that, in many cases, turn out to be true. Redford is the rich kid with connections. Jarman beat the Depression like the rest of the U.S., without a social worker.
"How did we do it?" he mocks.
Redford's film wife is played by Karen Carlson, pure eye candy (but what happened to her career I cannot say?). She has ambitions of her own, and pushes him to do it because he has the "power," an undefined sexual charisma of the JFK variety. Redford plays a caricature of himself, handsome but considered an empty suit. His deal is he can say any outrageous thing because he cannot win anyway, and in so doing shows he has the brains. When he creeps up in the polls, the idealism gives way to standard politicking, complete with deals with his old man's crooked labor buddies. He wins, demonstrating the power of looks and TV advertising. In the end he expresses that he is not prepared for the task.STEVEN TRAVERS AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
STWRITES@AOL.COM |
| Rating | | | Date | August 14, 2002 | | Summary | From California Senator to King of Aspen. | Content
| Political fantasy in which Robert Redford discovers that mounting a successful campaign for an "important" office -- in this case, a U.S. Senate seat representing California -- requires the candidate to be shallow, media-friendly, etc. The gist of the thing is that he loses his naivety, the poor baby. Give me a break. I suppose the movie succeeds as fantasy, and there are some moments and characters that elicit chuckles during the campaign trail. There's the occasional telling detail that suggests the screenwriters -- who had actually worked for real-life politicians -- have been there and done that. But it must again be stressed that *The Candidate* is mostly fantasy. Indeed, Redford's character is fantasy: he never existed, doesn't exist now, and will not exist in the future. And the screenwriters -- the liars -- KNOW this. Politics is a dirty business that attracts dirty people, like a horse-apple attracts flies. The desire to be a big-time American politician comes with having a sheer, unrelenting hatred of all that is good and decent. The producers and writers of *The Candidate* understood this (even if their liberal, golden-boy Hollywood star did not), and yet they chose to waste our time with a beddy-bye story of a potential hero who ends up corrupted. The TRUTH is that anybody who wants to be a Senator is by definition corrupted already; anybody with any sense knows this. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 10, 2002 | | Summary | "The Better Way??!" | Content
| "The Candidate" is liberal Hollywood's wet dream of the "realities" of a political campaign. Robert Redford (looking purposely Kennedyesque) is Bill McKay, a young crusading liberal attorney who's persuaded by political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle in a terrific performance) to run for the U.S. Senate against conservative Republican icon, Crocker Jarmon (even the name shows what a stacked deck the picture is), played by 50's TV sitcom star, Don Porter. Handsome and hip McKay is depicted as pro busing, pro welfare and pro choice...while stodgy old Jarmon is shown mouthing tired old conservative attitudes about Americans working hard and picking themselves up by their own bootstraps. The cast is uniformly excellent, especailly the great Allen Garfield as Mc Kay's media consultant whose shtick is breaking bags of lollipops with a hammer and sucking on the smashed pieces. Redford gives a slyly appealing movie star performance and is especially superb in one scene in which, completely burned out from campaigning, begins to satirize the platitudes his speechwriters have given him ("when the greatest country in the world can't feed the foodless!"). One wonders what kind of movie "The Candidate" would have been if Mc Kay's opponent was as equally young and hip and spoke with the same fervor as McKay without the tired old right wing cliches. Michael Ritchie directs in docudrama style from a script by Jeremly Larner who suposedly based the material on the Tunney-Murphy campaign in California. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 06, 2002 | | Summary | Political Realism Presented Entertainingly | Content
| "The Candidate" was released in the appropriate year of 1972, when Richard Nixon was reelected, using the media to present himself as a solid, trusted leader who was being challenged by liberal elitists operating in concert with the Eastern media establishment. When the full force of Watergate buried Nixon in scandal shortly thereafter, resulting in his resignation in 1974, the messages presented in "The Candidate" became all the clearer as Nixon's hollow facade lay fully exposed. Jeremy Larner, a former speechwriter for presidential candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy in 1968, used his political savvy to craft a script based on the realism of campaigning in the television age, in which, to use Marshall McLuhan's apt phrase, "the medium is the message." Larner copped a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his effort. Robert Redford plays Bill McKay, who runs a poverty law center and has no ambitions to seek political office. He is urged to do so as the Democrats in California seek an opponent for a solidly entrenched incumbent U.S. Senator played by Don Porter. Redford, whose father, played by Melvyn Douglas, is a former California governor, agrees to run after being told that he can address topics on his own terms. The idea is that he is expected to make a decent run but is not expected to win. Redford articulates ideas near and dear to him that are not embraced by the broad spectrum of California voters. When he runs poorly in the primary, however, he is informed that he needs to make changes or risk being humiliated in the general election by Porter, a prospect he does not relish. Redford's ensuing frequent turnabouts on major issues make him anything but the refreshingly candid candidate he sought to become. As the polls close and there is possible light at the end of the long campaign tunnel, Redford becomes more of a blurry media creation and loses the old image of refreshingly solid commitment he had previously displayed. Eventually Redford upsets Porter. By the time the long race ends he is immersed in a total blur. The film's closing line is a gem. After winning the race Redford, seated in his hotel room with his campaign staff, asks, "What do we do now?" "The Candidate" was one of director Michael Ritchie's finest efforts. The pacing becomes gradually stepped up as the campaign moves into its important stretch run. By the end the viewer is immersed in the same kind of non-stop, frenzied blur as are the candidates and their staffs, providing a graphic display of political realism via the camera's all-seeing eye. |
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