Fast Food Nation
Interesting, but not the ballsy flick I thought it might have been. Having read the book it’s like the producers looked at the issues and went 'Theres no way we can make a doco about this - the meat plants wont let us in to see their exploitation of migrant workers and poor environmental procedures and Maccas wont let us be a fly on the wall of their corporate meetings, so we'll just pretend this is what actually happens.' Yes, it’s a Syriana/Traffic 'explore an issue from all sides' multi-strand narrative. Another one.
Which is okay when it works, and it almost does here. The main problem is with the distribution of screen-time to these different points of view. I felt that way too much time was spent on some stories, primarily the migrants crossing from Mexico that end up working in a meat factory (feels like this is most of the film actually), while it cops out on others.
Could have been much better and more focused, however it’s an interesting addition to director Richard Linklater’s varied resume.