Evil Incarnate

Related Content

• The United States of Money
  May 12, 2010
• "Freakonomics": Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney, and others make shorts based on the pop-math book
  September 29, 2010
• "Client 9": Alex Gibney's doc rehabilitates Eliot Spitzer
  November 17, 2010
• "Magic Trip": Doc Follows the '64 Adventures of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters
  August 3, 2011
• Early Summer Movie Guide: What to See, When to See It
  May 18, 2011

More About

• Jack Abramoff
• Alex Gibney
• Tom DeLay
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Politics

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Passionate Republican, fervent Orthodox Jew, ruthless wheeler-dealer, super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff at his height fashioned himself into a human ATM machine who lined the pockets of politicians on every side of the aisle. Sooner or later, everybody from Tom DeLay to Patrick Kennedy 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 uniquely dramatic career still has much to reveal about how power malfunctions in America. Getting everybody around his subject to open up (Abramoff is still in prison, unavailable for interview), Gibney presents a thorough history and then maps, as per his movie's subtitle, The United States of Money, which 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. More chillingly, as Gibney's relentless X-Ray of a movie magnifies in detail, Abramoff leads politicians on junkets that hallow the sweat-shop archipelago that are the Marianas Islands as "a triumph of free enterprise." Gibney makes the case that the U. S. sponsors and protects traffic in slave labor that continues to this day. 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 ecstatic ambassador, and convenient fall guy.
May 21-27, 2010