Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Kevin Spacey is in top form....And Denis Leary makes every line ring bitterly funny and true....RECOUNT is exciting entertainment..." 06/12/2008 p.91DVD Town 5 of 10
Reopening the wounds (depending on your political affiliation, of course) of the 2000 presidential election, "Recount" is little more than a partisan, bitter, comical, delusional "reenactment" of the historic George W. Bush vs. Al Gore fight for the White House. With a litany of A-list talent attached, including Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Denis Leary, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson and Ed Begley, Jr., it?s a pity the script by Danny Strong couldn?t be stronger, clearer and keep a reign on its politics...If "Recount" had stuck to the facts, drawn the characters in anything but cartoonish caricatures or pretended to take an objective look at the subject matter, it would have hit pay dirt. Instead, this film debuting on HBO Memorial Day weekend, is completely transparent in its politics, doing everything but drawing halo?s on the Democrats and devil horns on the Republicans...The production doesn?t concern itself with getting the details and minutia right; it figures as long as the main bullet points are there, no one will notice. Conservatives will say this is another stab at them from liberal Hollywood; liberals will continue to point to 2000 as the year it all went south...There are layers to people, depths to get to in order to understand their motivations. We get nothing of the sort. Stereotypes and caricatures. Those do not make for good cinematic bedfellows. - Jason P. Vargo
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Katherine Harris was a piece of work. The Florida Secretary of State during the 2000 elections is not intended as the leading role in "Recount," an HBO docudrama about that lamentable fiasco, but every time Laura Dern appears on the screen, she owns it..."Recount," an efficient and relentless enactment of the strategists on both sides of the Florida controversy, shows an accident that was waiting to happen. So confusing was the state's "butterfly ballot" (how such terms resound in memory) that large numbers of senior citizens from liberal districts apparently cast mistaken votes for Pat Buchanan, a right-wing independent. Buchanan himself went on CNN to doubt that his support was quite that strong in Palm Beach County...You might assume the movie is pro-Gore and anti-Bush, but you would not be quite right. Dave Grusin's almost eerie score evokes a journey into uncharted territories and haunted lands, but that's as close as it come to making a statement (other than the incredulity voiced by the losers). The Democratic party figures portrayed in the film have been the loudest in protest, especially Warren Christopher (John Hurt), who was the first head of the Gore team, and is portrayed as a wimp ready to cave in to the GOP. Whether the film is fair to him I cannot say. - Roger Ebert
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