Casino Jack & The United States of Money

Passionate Republican, fervent Orthodox Jew, ruthless wheeler-dealer and super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff fashioned himself into a human ATM who lined the pockets of politicians on every side of the aisle. Sooner or later, everybody was at least marginally in his debt. His meteoric rise and fall may seem on its surface to be yesterday’s news, but as recounted here by filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), the man’s dramatic career still has much to reveal about how power malfunctions in America. Getting everybody around his subject to open up (Abramoff is in prison, unavailable for interview), Gibney presents a thorough history and then maps the United States of Money that made (and makes) such corruption possible. Abramoff fleeced Indian tribes of millions, while affecting to represent their interests; he entangled himself with murderous characters while launching his own fleet of gaming boats. As Gibney’s relentless X-ray of a movie magnifies in detail, Abramoff leads politicians on junkets that hallow the sweatshop archipelago of the Marianas Islands as “a triumph of free enterprise.” Gibney makes the case that the United States sponsors and protects traffic in slave labor. The blindfold that allows us to tolerate this (if only tacitly, in our ignorance) is the very mad-money ethic for which Abramoff was the ambassador and convenient fall guy.