Who Cast “Swing Vote?”

What’s more incredible than believing that one man’s vote can make all the difference in an election — not with the Electoral College, Diebold voting machines and the Supreme Court, not by a longshot — is that Kevin Costner is still considered a leading man. Now, it’s not like he’s being offered A-material these days. His latest, “Swing Vote,” is just the kind of middle-of-the-road pap that seeps out of studios every once in awhile, movies that seem to have no audience (i.e. movies made for the over-35 crowd) but simply satisfy some producer’s term deal.

So what the happened to Kevin Costner? Well, I think Kevin Costner happened to Kevin Costner. His notorious ego ballooned the budget of 1995’s “WaterWorld” to then-unheard of levels — $175 million. I understand some of this money went into using CGI to fix his receding hairline. Whatever the money was spent on, it’s irrelevant. The bloated budget buzz was enough to convince people before the movie even dropped that it was a dud. I’m still of the opinion that it’s not a bad film in the least. “WaterWorld” has some of the best setpieces of any film of the ’90s, four years before “The Matrix” reinvented the genre and made everyone fanatical about obvious-looking wire work. Costner does something unusual in the film, too, playing a character for a change. His otherwise nameless Mariner is a post-apocalyptic half-fish jerkstore. He softens up by film’s end, but isn’t afraid of being unlikeable for much of the runtime. That approach worked for me because I never really liked Costner to begin with.

“WaterWorld” was the penultimate nail in the coffin of Costner’s A-movie career. 1997’s “The Postman” was the last time he was allowed anywhere near a $100 million budget. I don’t remember the film well enough to be able to speak to its badness. But a 3-hour movie about a guy restoring the American spirit to a dystopia by delivering people’s mail is a hard sell even to the most hardcore genre — or Costner — fan.

Ever since, Coster’s floundered. He’s taken a few stabs at a comeback (like that Sam Raimi baseball movie), but to no avail. Now he’s just the guy you cast when your first, second and third choices have all turned down the role.

I can’t imagine the “Swing Vote” filmmakers gathered together for an early development meeting and all unanimously agreed, “This project has Kevin Costner written all over it!” But what kind of movie is “Swing Vote” anyway? It looks like a softball political satire, a microcosm of what goes on in presidential elections: some rube is torn between the candidates for both parties, candidates that care more about winning than keeping the promises they’re making. Bo-ring. I’m fairly certain that Costner’s character will learn that there’s fundamentally not a dime’s worth of difference when it comes to the two rich, old white men running for office and realize that true change should take place within himself… I’m sorry I nodded off while typing that. Where was I?

Now, it’d be pretty awesome if his character in the movie winds up voting for the more right-leaning candidate, one that would continue removing environmental restrictions and submerging us beneath our melting polar ice caps. “Swing Vote” would then basically serve as a prequel to “WaterWorld” with the Mariner character in the latter being a descendant of the fence-sitting loser from the former. But I imagine the filmmakers elected to do something different with the material.

-Brad Lohan

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