Time Out says
We watch as Mexicans, including Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and her boyfriend, Raul (Wilmer Valderrama) cross the US border and take jobs at the same, dangerous meat factory, while Amber (Ashley Johnson) works at the local Mickey’s branch despite strong protests from her trendy uncle, Pete (Ethan Hawke) and the debates between local students, Paco (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Alice (Avril Lavigne).
There’s little in the film’s choppy narrative and unexceptional mise-en-scène that’s equal to the book’s discomforting barrage of facts, figures and case studies, largely because Linklater and Schlosser’s script is a half-cocked and overloaded affair that aims condescendingly for a younger, less intelligent audience and fails to carve compelling or credible drama from its subject. Brief anti-corporate speeches from Hawke and Kris Kristofferson (as a local farmer) sound stuffy rather than tempting, and the messages are muddled: are we being told to hate both automation and meat? Why, too, does the trip across the Mexican border look like a walk in the park? There might be crap in the burgers, but there’s no grit in the movie; ‘It, kinda, doesn’t feel real,’ stumbles Amber when, finally awakened, she quits the burger trade. Too right: best stick to the book.
Release Details
- Rated:15
- Release date:Friday 4 May 2007
- Duration:113 mins
Cast and crew
- Director:Richard Linklater
- Screenwriter:Richard Linklater, Eric Schlosser
- Cast:
- Greg Kinnear
- Catalina Sandino Moreno
- Avril Lavigne
- Patricia Arquette
- Bobby Cannavale
- Paul Dano
- Luis Guzman
- Ethan Hawke
- Ashley Johnson
- Kris Kristofferson
- Esai Morales
- Lou Taylor Pucci
- Ana Claudia Talancón
- Wilmer Valderrama
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