Writer/director/star Tim Robbins almost gives us a telling political satire here - but not quite. As played by the imposingly tall but bland Robbins, Roberts is a singer who would be senator. The story shows him and his cronies as master manipulators of the public in their quest for power. Despite his clean-cut, Kennedy-style image, Roberts is clearly a sham, with a murky past involving drugs and the exploitation of housing for the poor - well up to the dirty tricks of the political scene that will put the opposition out of the running. We can see it; but Joe Public worships him; and the coup-de-grace in Roberts' campaign is a fake assassination attempt, with his chief journalistic opponent as the fall-guy. None of this, though, quite works, because its central device - the tracking cameras of a documentary film-maker - doesn't quite work either, drifting into tedium and disinterest when Roberts himself isn't centre shot. The result, though still frightening, isn't as tight or hard-hitting as it might have been, even though the film's heart is in the right place - firmly on its sleeve.


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