FILM REVIEW: CLIENT 9 THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER

Eliot Spitzer in Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.

Finance and flesh

By John Esther

There was a time and space where Eliot Spitzer's future looked good, really good. A liberal politician for law and order, it seemed the blue-eyed, silver spoon, New York Attorney General-turned-New York Governor may even become the United States' "First Jewish President." A defiant, courageous prosecutor who was not afraid to take on tycoons of industry, Spitzer became a hero for the working families of New York, prosecuting the kind of Wall Street thugs who would eventually bring America to the brink of economic collapse in 2008.

In the processes, Spitzer created a few very powerful enemies determined he be taught that the privileged were all to adapt at playing with their unfair advantage. With unlimited resources at hand, forces were sent out to get him. Since just about everyone has a weakness, it was only time before they found Spitzer's Achilles' heel.

Astonishingly, Spitzer, the disciplined disciplinarian, husband and father of three daughters was caught trying to get his pants down and off with ill repute company.

Directed by Alex Gibney, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer goes into the heart of Manhattan and New York State politics, uncovering the power, corruption, egos and lies of politicians and the economic hit men, mostly Republican, who wanted to take the state's most popular Democrat down and out of play. Was this an elaborate payback scheme?

Unlike others caught in adulterous situations – former U.S. President Bill Clinton; U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-La.) – Spitzer resigned his post. Why did Spitzer not say, "I made a mistake, let's move on"? Did New Yorkers really care so much about his infidelity and indiscretion, which did not effect them directly, to the degree it would outweigh the many accomplishments Spitzer achieved – e.g. bringing down the Gambino family's control of Manhattan trucking; inducing Merrill Lynch to pay a $100 million fine – which actually did have an effect on their lives?

Straying slightly from his typical talking head format, Gibney, along with Peter Elkin -- whom Gibney collaborated with on another documentary about statewide politics, money and corruption, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room -- interviews former Chairman and CEO of AIG Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, New York State Senator Joe Bruno (R), Home Depot Co-Founder Ken Langone and a particularly Roveian Republican strategist named Roger Stone.

These are some powerful men who do not usually speak to someone outside their milieu and once you hear them speak you can sense a class-I(d)-call disdain for politicians and the popular vote which puts them there. All may be fair in war and love, but nothing is fair in politics.

Gibney also gets Spitzer in front of the camera to ask him the begging question: Why would an extremely successful man go to considerable lengths just to jeopardize his public and private reputation just to get laid by a $1000-a-night escort? Occasionally reserved at times, Spitzer usually provides some thoughtful answers, in the process convincing the viewer that he may be back on top some day, some way.

Although some of the song narratives are unfortunate, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is far more thorough analysis of the rise and fall of Spitzer than we have heard through the media, Gibney's documentary sheds more light on contemporary politics, where the corruption of a personal marriage seems to take down anyone faster than the corruption of those grand institutions of a statewide, national, global proportion.

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FILM REVIEW: SOLITARY MAN

The leering eyes of Ben Kalmen (Michael Douglas).

No stronger than his sex

By John Esther

Later this year, actor Michael Douglas is slated to return to the big screen in director Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Rests to reprise his 1980s-greed archetype and the politically motivated Academy Award-winning character, Gordon Gekko, where the once Ronald Reagen-era demi-tycoon of downtown Manhattan reportedly comes out of prison and attempts to rebuild his kingdom in the George Bush Jr. era.

Not too dissimilar, in director and co-writer Brian Koppelman's Solitary Man, Douglas plays Ben Kalmen, a Long Island man whose own greedy disregard for others has brought him to the brink of woe and is now attempting to regain his robe and crown.  

Once one of Long Island's most successful car dealers, six-plus years later after visiting a doctor -- who potentially has news of that fearful thing for the dedicated father and husband -- Ben is attempting to pull himself out of his current failures in family and finance. He has already lost his wife of many years, Nancy (Susan Sarandon), but manages a strained relationship with his daughter, Susan Porter (Jenna Fischer), and his grandson, Scotty (Jake Siciliano) -- much to the dismay of Susan's husband and Scotty's father, Gary Porter (David Costabile), who is probably more successful than Ben was at his age and far more subdued as well.

(Similar to this film's storyline, in the latest Wall Street, Douglas' Gordon is allegedly estranged from his daughter, played by Carey Mulligan. In the original Wall Street Gordon had a son.)

Feeling the patriarchal impotence of a man disconnected to his family, Ben buries up his manhood by continually seducing women of flaming youth (insert Catherine Zeta-Jones observation here). His current girlfriend, Jordon Karsch (Mary-Louise Parker), is not only considerably younger than Ben she also has enough income and influence to chauffeur Ben back on the top of the car lot. 

Shall he dwindle, peak and pine? Ben would rather co-play the beast with two backs with women that threaten his family and financial future rather than be the king hereafter. A masochist of Shakespearean proportions, the more Ben sinks in his own dick-sand the harder he tries to pull out, only to ejaculate it in all the wrong places.

A thoroughly engaging film and by far Douglas’ best films in years, Ben's primrose path eventually hoists the anti-hero on his own petard without creating some false sense of pathos for the character. Ben’s expense of spirit in a waste of shame is motivated out of his perverted sense of control for his mortal coil and while it is not easy to sympathize for him, his itching palm is of a far more benign nature than those capital characters on Wall Street.  

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