Oliver Stone and West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin exist on the same pop culture plane, and while they’re temperamentally quite different (Stone’s a glass-half-empty social critic, Sorkin a hypereducated Frank Capra wannabe), they share some of the same virtues and flaws: rampant idealism, a stalwart faith in the idea that government doesn’t have to be corrupt, a fondness for long monologues that summarize major themes in case the drowsy guy in the back row missed something.

The Contender, a political thriller from former film critic Rod Lurie, also exists within this populist tradition, but two things make it stand apart: a fondness for real drama rather than spell-it-all-out polemics, and a fluid, intelligent camera style that breaks up long dialogue scenes and lets the actors act without making you feel as though you’re watching theater or television. Joan Allen stars as Laine Hanson, a senator who’s tapped to be the first female vice president when the current occupant kicks off prematurely. The chief executive, Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges), is entering what seems to be his final stretch in office and wants to make at least one grand historical gesture. To Lurie’s credit, the President arrives at this noble decision only after qualified male candidates either turn down the job or are discarded because they wouldn’t make it through the Senate’s confirmation process.

Hanson’s historic appointment is jeopardized by right-wing, woman-hating committee chairman Shelly Runyon (a heavily made-up Gary Oldman, who looks like Roberto Benigni dipped in citric acid). He pays for research that digs up an old photo that purportedly shows a 19-year-old Hanson blowing a guy in a fraternity gangbang. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

But The Contender rises above mere homage on the strength of its script, pacing and performances. Lurie has written and directed one other feature, the nuclear thriller Deterrence, which starred Kevin Pollak as the first Jewish president. Though his career is young, he already seems to have staked out a particular patch of storytelling terrain, and he’s exploring it in a style that acknowledges past masters (Otto Preminger, Elia Kazan and Robert Altman) while striving toward uniqueness. Like The West Wing, The Contender is a dialogue-heavy, performance-driven drama that prefers sharp conversation to spectacle; if it’s reminiscent of any recent political film, it’s Altman’s HBO miniseries Tanner ’88, which managed to be righteous about the way things ought to be and wise to the way things are.

Many of the marginal details ring true–Hanson’s anxiety over a live, satellite-linked tv news appearance, in which the host can see her on a monitor and she can’t see him; the casual grace with which the President and his chief adviser (Sam Elliott) switch on a dime between ideological fury and relaxed, unflappable machismo; the President’s opacity as he tells a rejected vice-presidential candidate (William Petersen), "You’re the future of the Democratic Party, and you always will be." There are flaws, some painful, none crippling. Lurie is a liberal, and so are the film’s sympathies; it’s one thing to have Hanson give a speech listing all the things she stands for (including the complete elimination of firearms and the unilateral protection of abortion rights), and it’s quite another thing to present her views as received wisdom. Speaking of speeches, there are too many; well-written as they are, they spell out ideas the actors and the director have already made crystal clear. (Maybe Lurie, Stone and Sorkin should form a support group: Didactics Anonymous.)

I’ll probably see The Contender again because entertaining films about substantive issues are in short supply, and I’ll eagerly await Lurie’s next picture for the same reason.

Animal Factory Directed by Steve Buscemi

Though not quite good enough to beat the sophomore jinx, actor-writer Steve Buscemi’s second effort behind the camera, the prison drama Animal Factory, is a finely shaded drama that walks the line between visceral genre picture and indie-film actor’s exercise.

Willem Dafoe stars as Earl Copen, a lifer at fictional Eastern State Penitentiary who, for his own private reasons, decides to protect and nurture a seemingly helpless younger inmate named Ron Decker (Edward Furlong) who’s serving a 10-year sentence on drug charges. Earl is cut from the same frayed jumpsuit cloth as Tim Robbins’ and Morgan Freeman’s characters in The Shawshank Redemption; which is to say he’s a natural leader who maintains power nonviolently, simply by being able to get anything and negotiate with anybody, regardless of race, creed or social clique. He instantly deduces that the sweet-faced new kid is a ripe target for rape by the bigger, stronger inmates and resolves to protect Decker without involving him in sentence-lengthening violence.

As Earl, Dafoe is terrific–hungry, hard and alert, like a gifted newcomer making a screen debut and giving it everything he’s got under the assumption that he might not get another chance. Furlong, whose wary eyes and verbal awkwardness are starting to look like proof of authenticity rather than a lack of chops, is a marvelous counterpart for the nervy, brainy Dafoe; his vanity-free performance makes the overly familiar role of New Fish in the Shark Tank feel relatively fresh. Dafoe and Furlong are backed by first-rate supporting players. Some are cast according to type, notably Seymour Cassel as a wise, empathetic senior prison guard. Other backup players are cast startlingly against type and somehow manage to pull it off. Tom Arnold, of all people, is terrifying as a vicious cracker rapist with weirdly joyous eyes. Equally good and even more startling is Mickey Rourke, who plays Decker’s transvestite cellmate, Jan, a wildly demonstrative but deeply cynical person. (I had to triple check the credits to make sure it was Rourke; he’s that convincing.)

Buscemi, whose droll barfly comedy Trees Lounge was one of the best first films of the 90s, expands his scope but sometimes loses his grip. The script is based on a book by ex-con-turned-writer Eddie Bunker (Straight Time), who played a bit part in Reservoir Dogs opposite Buscemi. Though the writer’s personal history confers an imprint of reality on the narrative, the movie doesn’t quite hit you with the force of raw, contemporary truth; sometimes it feels like a familiar story trying extra hard not to seem familiar. Bunker is not a young man, which may explain why Animal Factory occasionally feels like an old man’s reminiscence improperly and incompletely transferred to the present day. I don’t doubt that some elements of correctional life, such as intercell communication and contraband smuggling, haven’t changed much over the decades, but the film’s overall aura of gentlemanly toughness and honor among thieves struck me as owing more to movies than life. At times, Earl’s band of loyal friends and followers seems a bit too much like the cast of an ensemble tough-guy adventure movie from the 60s; though they’re all convicted felons, they’re all essentially decent and honorable in that easygoing, Howard Hawksian way. Which means the viciousness, though staged with flair, occasionally seems conceptual, designed to appall and impress, and the performances, though technically superb, sometimes remind you that you’re watching a bunch of very good actors playing prisoners.

For these reasons and others, Animal Factory’s abrupt ending–it’s like Buscemi ran out of film–seems doubly unsatisfying; a neorealist prison picture would more or less demand such an ending, but the narrative’s embrace of old-fashioned macho-movie tradition leads you to expect something bigger, more melodramatic, more movie-like–particularly in regard to resolution of the Earl/Decker relationship. I don’t want to explain that last misgiving because it might lead viewers to anticipate a surprise twist that’s never going to happen; suffice to say that if you see Animal Factory, you’ll know what I’m hinting at.

FRAMED
Bare skin, blue collar. Live Nude Girls Unite!, a first-person documentary by former San Francisco stripper Julia Query and co-director Vicky Funari, chronicles the attempts of Bay Area strippers to unionize. Though the subject matter cries out for a slot on HBO or Showtime, the film is less about sex than labor. If you don’t know the mechanics of the sex industry–meaning how the money changes hands and who gets most of it–it’s is a real eye-opener. Query and her fellow wannabe-unionizers blast lapdances not for abstract feminist reasons, but because they unfairly increase dancers’ workloads; they bemoan the hypocrisy of management ordering them not to say the dreaded word "pussy" even though they’re selling it for a living.

Query, a stand-up comic, out lesbian and daughter of sex-industry health activist and ABC commentator Dr. Joyce Wallace, has a serious case of the cutes. She tells us too much about her childhood and too often succumbs to the temptation to make a movie that’s part Roger & Me, part audition reel. But this is still a fascinating look at the intricacies of unionizing, strike-breaking and media-based p.r. warfare; the director’s insistence on videotaping almost every stage of the negotiation process hints at both a Clintonian sense of career possibilities and a lawyerly attitude toward the collection of evidence. Live Nude Girls should be shown in high school history classes as perhaps the only substantive look at labor issues that’s guaranteed to command teenagers’ full attention. Barbara Kopple’s American Dream is a better movie, but it didn’t feature union organizers named Decadence and Velvet.

Pixel future. The fourth annual RESFEST Digital Film Festival returns to New York City Oct. 18-22 at the Chelsea Cinema West and the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, showcasing short films designed for theatrical, tv and Internet distribution, plus music videos and other items of interest. For information, call 613-1600, or visit www.resfest.com.