In Fort Lauderdale 2001, Greek tycoon Gus Boulis, who runs SunCruz casino ships, is gunned down. This is the beginning of the end for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He has built a career coning native groups, corrupted politics, and backslapping all the way to the highest level of Republican officials.This is an exhaustive look at one of the reasons why American politics is so corrupt and how it has ingrained into the system. It is also a fascinating look at Abramoff's personality. Without a doubt, this is definitely ignored or panned by the political right. The big question for this two hour long documentary is whether the story is understandable and compelling. This is a simple to understand story. The story is eye-opening. It is compelling for anybody who wants to know what is going on.

It may well have to do with the fact that the pond scum explored in this doc about ripping off American Indians is so pervasive in the American political system is why we hide in dark theatres getting lost in contrived dreams rather than deal with the reality of these leeches in Armani suits with tentacles capable of getting the ear of some of the most powerful pols in DC. Given the choice of a spike in blood pressure or zoning out on an insipid comedy or unrealistic suspense drama where the good guy triumphs most of us choose (gauged by the miscreants huge take and light sentences) the latter.Casino Jack and the United States of Money is a mostly sober telling of super lobbyist Jack Abramhoff's rise and fall as he wheels and deals with not only shaking down American Indians with useful idiots for sale such as former Congressmen Bob Ney, Tom Delay and Ralph Reed but also involvement with Asian sweat shop owners and mob tied floating casinos. For Jack and his slimy cohorts Neil Volz and Michael Scanlon it was all about the green and coming up with creative ways to extract it from clients which they did in millions.Doc film maker Alex Gibney does a fine job of presenting the duplicitous practices of all involved diagramming for the viewer how money is funneled to get around campaign finance laws and keep the powers that be hands clean in the process. He retains his liberal credentials by hammering home the point it is mainly Republicans with their hands out but Congressional minority leader Reid of Nevada as well as Ted Kennedy "dim son" and former Congressman from RI, Patrick Kennedy are noted briefly getting a pretty hefty chunk of change as well.It is all a very dispiriting to view Casino Jack and the DC crowd gouging rather than serving made even more so by an insider that states these smoke and mirror practices are still in place today and will continue to be as long as money talks and campaign reform is kept at bay and an apathetic public views it as standard operational procedure. Gee, I wonder if they are showing a Laurel and Hardy down at the multiplex today?

When mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to jail in early 2006, he was seen as the personification of corruption, along with Tom DeLay and Bob Ney. But as "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" shows, Abramoff and the individuals associated with him were just the tip of the iceberg. Alex Gibney's documentary takes the same approach to its topic that his previous documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" does, looking at the roots of the main character, and how deregulation led to the culmination.I had read in Al Franken's book "The Truth with Jokes" about Abramoff's fleecing of the Tigua Indians and DeLay's promotion of the Mariana Islands to hide the garment industry's sweatshops there. The documentary looks at those, and goes a little further into Abramoff's role in the college Republicans, alliance with Angolan autocrat Jonas Savimbi, and more. One of the most important points is how Abramoff and Ralph Reed used religious fundamentalism, specifically how Reed was making large sums of money through links to Indian casinos while pontificating against gambling.But the most important topic that the documentary brings up is that this is neither "a few bad apples" nor a conspiracy. This happened because the American people let it happen by neglecting to take democracy seriously. Prevention of such events in the future requires the American people to stay vigilant of their government, and of corporations. Everyone should see this documentary.

Jack Abramoff was very good at what he did, which was taking money from people, such as at casinos in Indian reservations or with making deals in the Marianas, as favors. Lots of money was thrown to Jack and his cronies like Michael Scanlon as if they were giving protection, or just acting as lobbyists do, which is often, at best, shady work and at worst downright immoral. But hey, where does morality come into play when you can make millions, have jets and sudden getaways to play golf in Scotland, and/or season tickets to give away as freebies to sweeten up people at football games? It's a story of how a guy like Abramoff, a smooth talker and hardcore conservative, almost got away with his bribery and extortion tactics because, basically, Washington itself would condone most of his actions until he crossed the line. In this D.C., Mr. Smith couldn't get the time of day.What's intriguing in the film is how it looks at the system of lobbyists in a light not too unlike director Alex Gibney's previous documentary Enron. There's a certain lifestyle to be maintained with these guys like Abramoff and even his buddy in arms Tom Delay, almost a sort of alpha-male process of living through greed. And some of the best parts of the film actually aren't about the Indian Reservation scandal, but the back-story is what really sucks in a viewer. Abramoff was at the top of the crop, a College Republican at a time when Republicans looked to be on top with Regan in office and a fervent anti-Communists streak going through their methodology. Most amusingly we see an anti-Commie propaganda film Abramoff produced called Red Scorpion, featuring Dolph Lundgren and Abramoff's fascination with spies, which would carry over into his career on his own.Another heartbreaking story shown in the film is that of the Marianas, and what happened with free-reign unregulated capitalism. At this particular place businesses could work without regulation, and so they paid practically slave wages (the workers were at best indentured servants), and because the Marianas were (or still are) apart of the US, they could send off clothes to be sold as "Made in the USA". But when a congressman tried to blow the lid off the corruption going on- not to mention the sex trade- Abramoff was hired by people who wanted everything to be shown as squeaky clean, and reporters and Republican congressmen were flown down, shown everything was honky dory, and then got their R-and-R on at five star hotels. Ultimately the Marianas were left devastated when other treaties came in to regulate, but it was a demonstration of what could be done, rather bafflingly, by an unfettered "free market" - in large part thanks to Abramoff's kick-backs and reports from such free-market people as Delay and Dana Rorbacher.The testimonies give a lot of juicy and simply insightful information, and we really get to know how this mind of Abramoff's worked in relation to the power dynamic in Washington. He wasn't a politician, but he could do one better by feeding into the kick-backs and campaign contribution frenzy that is often the name of the game in DC. He did, ultimately, go into illegal territory, but the scary thing is that he could have potentially gotten away with all of it, and did for years (the fake corporation, for example, that was run by a surfer-dude and laundered hundreds of thousands that Abramoff didn't want to claim as income). It's a tale that has, at times, a multitude of details, especially when covering the Indian Reservation casino scandal. But in a way I liked how detailed it was; it gets to a point where Gibney keeps giving us these facts and notes of interest, and it just builds up to this: how corrupt and intricate can this get? Apparently, a lot.