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Fast Food Nation Movie Review

Fast Food Nation is a 2006 drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Patricia Arquette and Greg Kinnear among others. It’s a very chaotic movie.

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“It is a sad fact of life, Don,

but the truth is we all have to eat

a little shit from time to time“

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Don Henderson, a marketing executive for a national burger chain must leave blissful ignorance behind when his boss gives him an unsavory assignment: Investigate scientific findings that cow manure is contaminating the meat used in the company’s top-selling hamburger. This movie was based on a book, and a non-fiction one at that. Needless to say, it doesn’t really work as a feature movie, leading to a very odd picture.

I am all for this movie’s message and themes as it showcases the horrible behind the scenes of the meat industry, the unhealthy lifestyles of Americans and the plight of Mexican immigrants. The problem, though, is that the movie doesn’t explore its themes all that well. Some discussions are wonderfully dialectical as they provoke discussion and provide different, differing points of view, but still the film surrounding such great scenes is mostly mediocre.

So, what is my main issue here? Well, that has to be its messy structure and pacing. Everything here is disconnected from each other as the movie has so many different plot points and subplots that are not all that well connected and some are downright unnecessary. Another issue is its overly sour mood that was bordering tragedy porn in certain areas, much in the vein of the maligned ‘Crash’ from the previous year.

Because there are so many characters and actors in Fast Food Nation, most unfortunately do not get much to do, thus failing to make a proper impression. Of the actors, Patricia Arquette is per usual great, but Ethan Hawke was underutilized himself. Greg Kinnear is very strong here, and I also really liked the one scene with Bruce Willis as that scene was so reasonable in its overall discussion.

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The movie is poorly edited, even horribly I have to say. The result is a chaotic picture that never at all felt like a feature fiction movie. The other technical aspects are also far from great. As a result, it’s one of Linklater’s weakest movies and one of his darkest, but not in a good way.

Fast Food Nation deals with an important subject matter, some actors did make an impression here and a couple of its discussions are admirably dialectical in approach. However, this is still such a majorly chaotic movie that only barely resembles a feature fiction film having in mind that its editing is horrible, its overall structure is an utter mess, and some of its sections piled on tragedy so much that the result reminded me unpleasantly of the much maligned ‘Crash’.

My Rating – 2.5

You can get Fast Food Nation on Amazon.