麻豆社

Three years after Super Size Me took a hefty bite out of the box office, writer-director Richard Linklater serves up Fast Food Nation. It's a fictionalised account of the burger business based on a damning expose by Eric Schlosser. But unlike Morgan Spurlock's documentary, it's surprisingly light on laughs and slathered in self-importance. Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full Of Grace) shines among a fine ensemble cast, but overall, the mishmash of storylines fails to satisfy.

Moreno is Sylvia, one among a group of illegal Mexican immigrants shamelessly exploited at a meat-processing plant north of the border. Linklater explores the factory from a distinctly vegetarian, and frankly patronising standpoint, dwelling on blood-spattered walls and sloppy cow guts oozing down conveyer belts. And in case that doesn't get your stomach churning, there's the revelation that high levels of cow excrement are finding their way into the best-selling burger patties.

"DOESN'T FULLY DELIVER"

Greg Kinnear plays the exec investigating the poop problem and dishes out a few precious moments of comedy relief. Generally though, it's a vacuous role. Ashley Johnson's turn as the fast food till jockey who grows a conscience doesn't amount to much either, and Ethan Hawke does an even more pointless drive-thru as her moralising uncle. The only story that feels fleshed out is Sylvia's, as she's forced to endure endless indignities in pursuit of The American Dream. But even then, Linklater doesn't fully deliver. Rather like a fungus-based meat substitute, this film feels as though it's good for you, but actually there are few lasting benefits.

Fast Food Nation is released in UK cinemas on Friday 4th May 2007.