'Casino Jack': The rise and fall of a D.C. lobbyist

"Jack Abramoff could sweet-talk a dog off a meat truck," says someone in Alex Gibney's sharp documentary "Casino Jack and the United States of Money"; it's not exactly a compliment. Gibney, an Oscar winner for "Taxi to the Dark Side," entertainingly traces the former D.C. lobbyist's swift rise to power and dramatic fall to disgrace. He is currently serving a jail sentence for several federal counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and tax evasion.

Much of "Casino Jack," as in so many good documentaries, falls into the stranger-than-fiction category. Abramoff, for example, decided to become a conservative Jew while watching the movie of "Fiddler on the Roof." (We hear a snippet of "If I Were a Rich Man.") Before becoming a lobbyist, he was a movie producer whose oeuvre included the 1989 Dolph Lundgren action film "Red Scorpion." At the peak of his financial power, he set up a front organization to funnel money between clients and politicians, hiring lifeguard Dave Grosh to be its fake CEO. Grosh appears in the film, remembering that he was asked to head an international corporation and told that his duties would be "to do nothing." Sure, he said.

And Abramoff had an online habit that eventually got him in trouble. Gibney shows us countless e-mails between Abramoff and associates, gleefully discussing the money being raked in through fraudulent deals. "I couldn't believe they were e-mailing about this," says Grosh. Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, stares at the camera in disbelief. "Every person in American should learn from this," she says, half-mockingly. "Don't put it in writing."

Interspersed with movie clips — Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" is especially poignant — "Casino Jack" unfolds as a tale of hubris and undoing, and an ultimately depressing portrait of corruption as the norm in our nation's capitol. (The Abramoff scandal brought down several politicians and touched numerous others, on both sides of the aisle, who had taken money from him.) It's a story well told, but Abramoff's voice is missing: Gibney interviewed him in prison but could not film him. You wonder what this sweet-talker might say for himself, looking back over that long, ugly money trail.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com