His film uses a fictional sledgehammer to attack the cozy love triangle involving lobbyists, lawmakers and money. This decision to name names by the director George Hickenlooper seems based on boldness, recklessness or perhaps iron-clad legal assurances. Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove, George W.
The film is “inspired by real events,” and the characters in this film have the names of the people in those real events: Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Rep. “Casino Jack” is so forthright, it is stunning. They drop broad hints that a character is “really” Dick Cheney or Bill Clinton and so on. Political movies often play cute in drawing parallels with actual figures.
