It’s
hard to watch a movie with a preconception that it’s going to
be gruesome, hard-hitting and factual, but I was surprised when I
finally got the guts to watch Fast Food Nation. The movie is based
on a book by Eric Schlosser called Fast Food Nation: The dark Side
of the All-American Meal.
It starts off with images of a juicy, greasy, all-American burger
then spawns off into different lives of the people who get it through
the plants and into the production line at a restaurant known as Mickey’s.
It shows background of modern day cooking with perfumes added to a
mixture of mystery meat to give it the flavor we know as Bar-B-Q.
The main company has a meeting about their new burger called “the
Big One” and talk about the ever-sing growth of sales, especially
among children.
Behind closed doors, it gets serious when the CEO asks his Marketing
Representative (Greg Kinnear), to go check on the main meat factory
because a test done by some high school kids found high levels of
fecal matter, or e-coli bacteria in the meat.
Then it wanders into a story about immigrants, illegally crossing
the Mexican border into the United States. It follows these immigrants
until they reach safety and show how simple it was for them to be
smuggled into the meat packing company, where many were sexually harassed,
injured on the job without further assistance and their struggles
to make a life in America.
The switch reminded me much of Babel or Pulp Fiction. It’s nicely
choreographed to where each storyline intertwines nicely at the end.
There is also a group of high school kids that performed the e-coli
tests and it shows their struggle to fight the big meat marketers.
One of the girls even quits her job at Mickey’s as a result.
Henderson makes his rounds to each level of the Mickey’s chain
to discover how fecal matter could have ever gotten into the meat,
only to meet very discouraging people who tell him straight out that
his boss, who sent him there, knew all along that it was there, but
was trying to merely stop a group of protesting kids from getting
the word out.
It amazed me by the way the director, Richard Linklater, wraps us
so emotionally around each character including the immigrants played
by Catalina Moreno and Wilmar Valderrama (70’s Show).
I was surprised to see actors and actresses like Bruce Willis, Patricia
Arquette, Ethan Hawke and Kris Kristofferson make short, but very
strong impressions on the parts they played.
In the end- it is a head-chopping, skin crawling, gut wrenching experience,
but overall I suggest Fast Food Nation to anyone who eats fast food.
The growth of the industry has created a lower standard of product.
The DVD is set to release on March 6.
