Choose Connor 2 stars
Steven Weber, Alex D. Linz, Escher Holloway
Directed by Luke Eberl
Shows again June 9 at 4:30 p.m.
There’s a point in Choose Connor when Congressman Lawrence Connor (Weber) tells 15-year-old aspiring politician Owen (Linz) a story about how he dealt with a bully who habitually stole his lunch money back in grade school. Rather than fighting to resist the bully or bring him to justice, Connor found a way to “work within the system,” using ingenuity and blackmail so that he could continue to pay off the bully, get his lunch for free and even skim a few coins off the top for himself. It’s a great story, absolutely oozing with Gordon Gekko corruption, and it leaves you wondering whether young Owen will stick to his idealism or join the System.
That’s what’s best about Choose Connor, a film that begins to do for politics what Wall Street did for capitalism. It shows us with subtlety and finesse how the people in power, blinded by the spotlight, begin to lose sight of the people they’re supposed to serve. Owen is the ambitious Charlie Sheen character, who, flattered by Connor’s offer to make him his “youth campaign spokesman,” begins to overlook Connor’s darker traits. The congressman and senator-to-be endorses conflicting policies, speaks in half truths and rapes young boys for fun. Wait—what was that? Yeah, when Connor isn’t busy campaigning, he hosts Eyes Wide Shut-style rape parties for high ranking officials.
And suddenly what had been a political allegory grounded in reality becomes a seedy, sensationalized conspiracy theory. Owen receives an anonymous videotape in the mail, which shows one of the molested boys interrogated by off-screen authorities. Who sent this tape? We’ll never know. Not that it matters. When Owen seeks help, he’s summarily told that it’s “useless to fight the system.”
The problem is that we were getting that same cynical message before the molestation plotline overwhelmed the narrative, but we were believing it then. Do most politicians become dishonest and corrupted by power? Possibly. Do they all get together to rape children. No way. If they did, it would be a lot easier to fight the system. The reality is far more subtle, sinister and, ultimately, hard to fight. But this movie is all out of reality by the end.