'Recount': Still Too Close for Comfort

Kevin Spacey -- just one member of an unusually prominent and impressive cast -- plays Klain as a man with nuances and complexities that wouldn't be there if Klain had simply been the undoubting true believer, an update of, say, the idealistic congressman James Stewart played in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Actually, the kind of hard-edged operative that Spacey plays has been a character in several politically themed movies of much more recent vintage, but Spacey brings something new and distinctive to what might have been a stereotype.

Prepare yourself for a torrent of wickedly good performances: the casually astonishing Tom Wilkinson as James Baker III, leader of the Bush brigade; Ed Begley Jr. as wily Gore lawyer David Boies; John Hurt as excessively stately Gore ally Warren Christopher; Bob Balaban as pious Bush worker Ben Ginsberg; and, spectacularly, Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, the ill-equipped Florida secretary of state thrust to the forefront of history, empowered beyond her wildest dreams and way, way beyond her competence.

The casting is impeccable, and the makeup masterfully done, right down to the smallest of the dozens of roles. It's a minor but distinct pleasure to discover, as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the veteran TV character actor William Schallert. He looks more like a justice than most of the current justices do.

"Recount" is also an exercise in a perverse kind of nostalgia. Exhumed from memory are such terms and phrases as "chad" (the plural of which, we are told, is "chad"), dimpled chad, hanging chad, hand counts and machine counts, and a notorious "purge list" of convicted felons who were to be turned away from the polls as ineligible to vote -- a provision that scandalously extended even to those who merely had names similar to the ex-cons, especially, it appears, if they were members of an ethnic minority likely to vote for Gore.

We hear again Bush on the phone with Gore at the moment Gore decided, suddenly, not to concede the election after all, and Gore childishly telling Bush not to "get snippy about it." In this scene, Bush is played by look-alike Brent Mendenhall, but usually when we see Bush, it's the real Bush in video from the archive of CNN or some other news organization. As Gore, Grady Couch is seen mainly from the back, especially in an overdone scene in which a limping aide follows him down a hallway, feebly shouting important news.

The movie is not framed as the story of the noble, virtuous Gore forces being undone by corrupt Bushniks. Gore and his team made their share of mistakes both major and minor; in the former category, naming Warren Christopher to head up their campaign for a recount. Christopher is pretentiously determined to take the high road ("Chaos will not help our cause") and to view the struggle in grandly historical terms, even as Baker is rolling up his sleeves and getting ready for a fight that he knows could get down and dirty.

In an instance of stark contrast, Roach cuts from Baker telling his staff, "I want to file a lawsuit . . . as quickly as possible" to Christopher saying with bizarre finality, "Absolutely no lawsuit" would be filed by the Gore side. It was like a heavyweight champion doing battle with a devout pacifist.

Fortunately for Gore and the film, Christopher's stepping aside clears the way for Klain to take over. The job is full of maddening frustrations; for every little victory, there is an equal-size, or larger, defeat. The twists, turns, setbacks and windfalls become almost comically unceasing, and there's an irony around every corner, as when Ginsberg, portrayed by Balaban as absurdly sanctimonious, anticipates a Bush victory: "The stains of Bill Clinton will be washed away," he says, "and honor and dignity will be restored to the White House."

Right. If any old stains were washed away, there would be plenty of new stains to replace them.

Dern has one of the best roles of her career as Harris, who seemed so preposterous in her TV appearances at the time that Dern's task is really to show as much restraint as possible -- to play Harris, who wallowed in the spotlight more than any contestant ever on "American Idol," more credibly than Harris did. Even Baker, rooting for the blatantly pro-Bush Harris, moans, "This woman is hopeless."

The lesser details are important, too, in bringing the era back; amid all the cynicism and cunning, it's somehow warmly reassuring to see Dan Rather in his anchor chair again and using such Ratherisms as "crackling like a hickory fire" and "madder than a rained-on rooster." Some things are, almost amazingly, better now than they were then.

The authenticity of the film may not be beyond reproach, but its version of events certainly deserves the benefit of a doubt, especially considering the impeccability of consultants who vetted the script -- among them Jeffrey Toobin, author of "Too Close to Call," and David Von Drehle, Time editor at large, who wrote "Deadlock: The Inside Story of America's Closest Election." Of course, one has to allow for the possibility that HBO hired these and other authors as consultants so it wouldn't have to shell out larger amounts to buy the rights to their books. But that would almost be looking this gift horse in the mouth, and as gift horses go, this one's in a league with Big Brown.

And yet. Although "Recount" is a smashing success on almost every level, it's also a brutally disheartening experience for the story it tells. It's history with a vengeance, tumbling out at you in a way that demands attention, no matter how badly you may want to withhold it -- a trip down a Memory Lane full of potholes, roadblocks, fender benders and dreadful, bloody crashes.

Recount (two hours) premieres tonight at 9 on HBO.