3 out of 5

Director: Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater would seem to be a consistent film-maker. I’ve only seen about half of his works, but, as he admits, he’s a character-piece director, and the works I’ve seen are all constructed similarly. This works to greater or lesser extent depending on the subjects. In Fast Food Nation it works so-so. The main problem is that Linklater’s natural rhythm doesn’t lend itself well to plots. His movies are written and constructed, but they don’t, by design, really build to anything. Which fits with the theme of the movie, but it doesn’t successfully use this to illustrate any points. You have several interesting stories which sort of intertwine and sort of begin and sort of end. This is so “sort of” that there’s even a scene after the initial credits. It was one of those “let’s end it here,” moments, and then they realized they still needed to put in a concluding scene for Greg Kinnear’s character. But it should be said that the saving grace ARE these characters. Kinnear, as always, lends amazing humanity to his role, and even those with little dialogue shine through as real people. It’s just sad that this wasn’t designed in a way to better take advantage of a 2 hour film.