I like John Sayles a lot. Lone Star is one of my favourite films. Unfortunately his new one, Silver City, is not. Which is a great pity because it shares a lot of similarities with Lone Star, and has some terrific turns from Chris Cooper and Maria Bello.
But sometimes you get a perfect match for a character and actor, and in this case that appears in Danny Houston, youngest scion of the Houston clan. Danny plays the private investigator who used to be a journalist sent to hush up a sensitive political story. Instead of hushing it up, he investigates it and causes a stink. This is a really rubbish character. He is in no way sympathetic, stupid and injurous to most characters around him: he is supposed to be a loveable fuck-up, he is an annoying fuck-up. Problem is that Danny Huston does not have loveable in his repetoire. Rather he plays it as a less sympathetic, slightly less fat Oliver Platt. So as the political machinations continue, you lose touch with the plot because you could not care less about the crusader.