Posted by Justin Jeffre

For those who’ve read the 2001 best seller Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser, you might be wondering how this expose of the fast food industry could be adapted into a fictional story with a star-studded cast. Schlosser and director Richard Linklater create several interweaving story lines that touch on the books most important issues.

Even with big names like Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Wilmer Valderrama, Chris Christopherson, Patricia Arquette and Avril Levine this film hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, possibly because it takes on a very powerful interest. Just think of Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry.

Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is the marketing brain behind the success of fast food chain Mickey’s (not to be confused with McDonald’s) the “big one.” Sales are up and so is the fecal content in the meat. Anderson is sent to find out what’s going on. He travels from the laboratory where they create the smell of flame broiled burgers with chemicals to a fictional small town in Colorado where the dark side of the industry is revealed.

Like a modern day version of Upton Sinclair’s expose The Jungle, Fast Food Nation takes you inside a modern meatpacking plant called Uniglobe. There you get an inside look at the dangerous working conditions and abuse of workers that are part of the systems drive to maximize the bottom line.  Undocumented workers are all too often exposed to sexual abuse, permanent disabilities and death. These are some of the most dangerous jobs there are and the ugliest.

The movie follows undocumented workers (Wilmer Valderrama and Catalina Sandino Moreno) who are so desperate to make their lives better that they are willing to risk their lives to cross the border and find work doing whatever they can. They end up working at Uniglobe where their American dream becomes a nightmare.

An untold number of these workers never make it across because those that aren’t counted in life don’t get counted in death. No matter what your take on the immigration issue, seeing the human faces of it makes for a thought-provoking story.

The faster the line moves at Uniglobe the larger the corporate profits, but there’s a down side for workers and consumers. After watching the “kill line” you may never look at a hamburger the same way again. As Harry Rydell (Bruce Willis)—the go between for Mickey’s hamburger chain and Uniglobe—puts it, “Everybody eats a little shit sometimes.” Rydell warns Anderson that if he pushes his investigation he could lose his job and you get the feeling that’s not all.

There are hidden costs that get transferred to society. Aside from the inhumane treatment of animals, these factory farms create giant pools of animal waste that would be comparable to the amount of human waste created by the people of Denver. This waste doesn’t get the same treatment and often seeps into the ground water and pollutes drinking water.

An idealistic young Mickey’s employee named Amber (Ashley Johnson) joins a student environmentalist group. They decide that a letter writing campaign isn’t effective enough so they set out to free thousands of cattle by cutting the fence. A brave move considering they know under the Patriot Act they would be charged as eco-terrorists. To their dismay the cows like many people can’t emancipate themselves from mental slavery and happily sit and wait for their demise. Other than quitting her job at Mickey’s and refusing to support it anymore, they alone don’t have much of an impact.

The end of the movie is a powerful sequence where you go through the “kill line” and see the ugly process of a bull being dismembered. Even more powerful was the tears of a beautiful undocumented worker named Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) that gets treated like a piece of meat by a sexually abusive supervisor of an abusive corporation and destructive industry. Her tears speak to the pain and frustration of millions of abused women and workers.

On the down side there were a few times where Linklater could’ve cut a few side stories like the kids who talk about robbing the store, but it never goes anywhere. It was a little odd that Anderson is gone for a long time and finally shows up in the credits where we learn he makes a terrible decision to play it safe for himself and sweep the cow chips under the meat.

This film points out serious problems and leaves you feeling that the solutions are left for us to figure out. It shows us some of the effects of putting the all mighty dollar before the health and well being of workers, consumers and the environment. In a culture that values profits over people, human beings are too often dehumanized, marginalized and become voiceless victims of industries that leave destruction in their wake.

It’s refreshing to see a film challenge us to look at the effects of this mentality and the socioeconomic world it has created, where half of the worlds population can’t live decent lives because of our over consumption, greed and unrestrained corporate power.

We all play a role and most of us are part of this problem. It’s our responsibility to be the solution. With human rights day approaching on Dec. 10th, it’s a timely reminder that we should think about the effects our consumption has on our planet and our species.  The bottom line is that life as we know it is more important than the bottom line. Get the book, go see the movie and don’t support the real Fast Food Nation!

Thank you for reading (and printing from) The Cincinnati Beacon.