Fast Food Nation (2006)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO IS REALLY TO BLAME)

[The following Plot Buster started life as a question about who was really to blame for the problems in the fast food industry. However, it met with such little interest, that I have converted it into a Bust.]

Fast Food Nation (2006) directed by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Schlosser, loosely based on Schlosser's bestselling 2001 non-fiction book of the same name. Stars Greg Kinnear.

In the end Greg Kinnear learns that job security means more to him than the health of his company's customers.

Greg Kinnear plays a sports broadcasting marketing director recently recruited to the management of a nationwide chain of fast food restaurants.

Responsible for the company's most popular menu item, Kinnear is charged with discovering why independent research has found alarmingly high levels of faecal material in their meat.

Travelling to their supplier's processing plant in Colorado, Kinnear has trouble getting to the truth, until he is put in touch with veteran cattle rancher, Kris Kristofferson, whose Mexican housekeeper is able to confirm Kinnear's worst fears about the operation's hygiene standards.

Indeed poor hygiene is only a symptom of worse problems with their supplier that all stem from its ruthless exploitation of illegal Mexican migrant workers.

Armed with this information, Kinnear decides to corner his company's local representative, Bruce Willis, who brokered their cut price deal for the meat.

Willis, however, is unapologetic of the situation, and impresses upon Kinnear the precariousness of his new position should the truth ever come to light.

After a telephone conversation with his wife, in which she reminds him just how important success in his new job means to their family, Kinnear decides not to reveal what he has discovered to his boss.

Interwoven around Kinnear's quest are the stories of various other individuals caught up in the fast food business.

There is the franchise owner who is afraid to reveal what he knows about poor working practices to Kinnear.

And there are his low paid workers who are more interested in thinking up schemes to rob the franchise than they are in doing a better job.

Also shown are the futile efforts of a group of young idealists to protest against the environmental damage that the company's exploitation of cattle causes.

And, of course, there are the illegal migrants who are not only exploited by the meat supplier managers, but also by their supervisor, fellow Mexican Bobby Cannavale, and by the ruthless people traffickers who smuggle them into the US.


Linklater's fictionalised account of Schlosser's revealing investigation into the fast food industry makes pretty unpalatable viewing, and not just because of the contents of the burgers!

Nobody emerges guilt free, except maybe for the migrants themselves and Kristofferson's ranch owner who rails against the effect that corporate free market culture has had on food production.

So, perhaps it's not surprising that the film met with more critical than commercial success, as audiences were understandably reluctant to face the awkward question of just how their fast food could be so cheap?

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation_%28film%29