While no one ever mistook Chicken McNuggets for health food, Eric Schlosser's 2001 muckraker Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal opened many eyes to the far-reaching consequences of fast food. Schlosser argues that the fast-food industry is tremendously detrimental not only to national health, but also to the economy, the environment and the basic quality of American life. But rather than pouring his careful research into an equally eye-opening documentary, Schlosser and filmmaker Richard Linklater pooled their resources to make a dramatically spotty fiction film in which a group of very different men and women, all employed by the "Mickey's" (wink, wink) hamburger chain, converge in Cody, Colorado, an ugly sprawl of strip malls and drive-thrus that's home to Uni-Globe, a massive meatpacking company. Hotshot marketing VP Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is sent to the Cody plant to investigate — and hopefully contain — allegations that the meat Mickey's buys contains a disconcertingly large amount of cow manure. Don is given a tour of the high-tech, apparently sterile facility, and at first glance everything seems on the up-and-up. What he's not shown, but which a local rancher (Kris Kristofferson) assures him, is that Uni-Globe's killing floor is ground zero for contamination. That's where cows are "disassembled," and unskilled workers, under intense pressure to keep the production line moving, accidentally mix waste from the disemboweled animals with the meat headed for Mickey's grills. Three such workers — Mexican sisters Coco (Ana Claudia Talancon) and Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno), and Sylvia's boyfriend Raul (Wilmer Valderrama) — were all recently smuggled across the border, shipped to Colorado and immediately put to work at Uni-Globe. Repulsed by the work — and by her predatory supervisor, Mike (Bobby Cannavale) — Sylvia quits and takes a job as a hotel chambermaid, while Coco and Raul fall prey to sexual exploitation, drug abuse and unsafe work conditions. Teenage Amber (Ashley Johnson) works on the opposite end of the Mickey's production chain: She's a counterperson at a Cody-area Mickey's and is helping her single mom (Patricia Arquette) make ends meet while she dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer. But her schedule leaves little time for her to pursue anything other than her low-wage, part-time job, and she doesn't think about where the "beef" she's serving customers comes from until she has her consciousness raised by a pair of earnest ecowarriors (Avril Lavigne, Aaron Himelstein), who devise an action against Uni-Globe. Much of what makes Schlosser's book a must-read is the clarity with which he exposes connections between the way the fast-food industry operates and larger contemporary American ills. These connections may not be readily apparent and could be best served by an equally incisive documentary; presenting facts in a wrapper of fiction only muddies the waters, and many of the film's subtler points are likely to slip by viewers who haven't first read Schlosser's book. Other salient points are shoehorned into the dialogue, rendering key scenes preachy, heavy-handed and dramatically inert. --Ken Fox
