Recount

At one point, before a press conference, Dern morphs her face from that of a human being into Harris' crazy-cuckoo public mask, and the moment is absolutely chilling. Fair? Debatable, but like Recount, it's a gorgeous bit of political theater.

Although Recount is a smashing success on almost every level, it's also a brutally disheartening experience for the story it tells.

Sure enough, HBO's "Recount" is replete with inside politics. But it also has well-written characters, first-class acting and confident directing, which produces a level of tension and suspense you wouldn’t expect in a story about a widely reported recent event.

Written with an eye for telling detail by Danny Strong, and directed in surprisingly nimble fashion by blockbuster-comedy wrangler Jay Roach (of the Austin Powers movies and Meet the Parents fame), it has the peculiarly alchemic structure of a nail-biting tragi-farce.

HBO’s crisply told, colorfully acted Recount wants to be both legal thriller and nightmare farce as it recounts, with news footage and dramatic re-creation, the cliff-hanger aftermath in Florida of the 2000 “squeaker” election between George W. Bush and Al Gore (both mostly off camera).

Smart, star-studded and anchored by another fine-tuned performance from Kevin Spacey, Recount finds the sweet spot between theatrical fare and TV that's precisely the constituency HBO wants to reach.

Recount, an astute and deliciously engrossing film on HBO this Sunday night, retells the tale of Florida in all its bizarre and inglorious moments, from haggling over the “hanging chad” and “butterfly ballots” to the ruckus between the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, and the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board.

Wilkinson steals the entire movie with his portrayal of Baker, playing him as a brilliant, wily political strategist.

Recount pays due diligence to history while at the same time fictionalizing the interactions of the participants.

Recount, an efficient and relentless enactment of the strategists on both sides of the Florida controversy, shows an accident that was waiting to happen

Needless to say, Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary are both lively and funny in their roles as members of Al Gore's team, but it's Laura Dern who really steals the movie with her hysterically self-involved portrait of Katherine Harris.

Even viewers who had thought they never wanted to hear about a dimpled chad again will find that Recount moves along at a satisfying clip and can make the old drama and suspense seem surprisingly fresh.

While it's not a great TV movie--it's basically a high-class Movie of the Week, a docudrama that dramatizes events you'll recall from the news at the time if you were following it--it's nonetheless a gripping recounting (ha!) of a Presidential drama that was pretty gripping at the time to begin with.

Populated by some super actors, the film, sometimes fascinating, sometimes too drawn out, gets inside the frenzied Florida jockeying for a presidential victory.

A watchable and skillfully made telefilm (Jay Roach of "Austin Powers" fame directed) that is, nonetheless, marred by a melodramatic reliance on Good vs. Evil, and guess which side is which?

HBO's Recount is an entertaining political drama, one in which both Democrats and Republicans get dinged, but the film is clearly sympathetic toward the underdog Democrats.

Recount effectively dramatizes that struggle, mixing a true-to-life script with real news footage.

Assuming that you share its sense of outrage at what Jim Baker and Supremes wrought (in a decision they declared a one-off, not applicable to any future rulings), the movie offers easy targets and conclusions. But to intimate there was a way to “win” if only everyone had played fair, Recount has to back off the entrenched problems and the more horrific conclusion, that the system is rigged and no matter who plays it, the end is the same.

With the exceptions of a furious Denis Leary as Michael Whouley, chief political strategist of the Democratic National Committee, and an over-the-top Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, Florida’s hothouse secretary of State, a splendid cast mostly just sits around watching the bad news on television, dutiful to the letter of Danny Strong’s conscientious script yet insufficiently roused to righteous spirit even as, before their eyes, our republic gets banana’d.

Recount should be tight and tense, or, perhaps, wildly satirical. Instead, it just rehashes the mess all over again, in detail, with lots of news footage to support the dutifully invented backstage scenes.

It has so much political minutiae to get through--the hanging chads, the vote-counting procedures, the legal maneuverings, etc.--that the characters get short shrift.

The film is already a lost cause from its opening scene, during which an old woman wearing a Star of David necklace walks into a polling station and appears stricken by either IBS or Alzheimer's after accidentally screwing up her butterfly ballot.

HBO's Recount fails. Invented dialogue and actions attributed to real-world figures play side by side with, and are indistinguishable from, verifiable actions and events that took place in Florida in 2000.