'Zipper': Sundance Review

Courtesy of Sundance International Film Festival

Patrick Wilson in 'Zipper'

A flaccid scandal movie that makes illicit sex a yawn

Sundance Film Festival (Premieres)

Patrick Wilson, Lena Headey, Ray Winstone, Richard Dreyfuss, John Cho, Dianna Agron

Mora Stephens

The fallout from the sexual transgressions that unfold behind America's corridors of power has provided juicy fodder for a lot of excellent television, The Good Wife and House of Cards at the top of the list. So it takes a film with sharper teeth than Zipper to expand the conversation about our endless capacity to be shocked by flawed leaders. Director Mora Stephens ponders (or purports to) what drives men in high office to risk their personal and professional reputations for expensive extramarital recreation. But she gives Patrick Wilson nothing but a sleek shell to play, so it's hard to get too worked up about his character's unraveling.

Stephens and co-writer Joel Viertel have dabbled in politics and passion before, in the director's low-budget 2005 debut Conventioneers. It's taken a decade to cook up this glossy sophomore effort, and in that time tabloid ink has flowed like Niagara Falls with the public shaming of Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, Mark Sanford and their ilk. Yet there's neither topicality nor bite in this bland pseudo-thriller, which lathers on composer H. Scott Salinas' high-suspense score like shower gel after sweaty sex, yet rarely musters an ounce of genuine tension.

Wilson plays Sam Ellis, a talented federal prosecutor whom we first encounter weeding out corruption in the mayor's office of an unnamed Southern city in a highly publicized court case. (The film was shot in Louisiana but appears to be set in South Carolina.) At the victory drinks afterwards, happily married Sam narrowly resists the aggressive advances of an attractive law school intern (Dianna Agron). But sex is on his mind when he meets a former high-end hooker (Elena Satine) while working an identity theft case. It's also probably on his browser history if his wife Jeannie (Lena Headey) a supposedly even sharper lawyer than Sam before she put her career on hold ever thought to check.

Anyhow, while Jeannie and others close to Sam are urging him to seize the spotlight and throw his hat into the political ring, he's busy sampling the services of a company called Executive Privilege. He's careful to cover his tracks at first, but as he starts working his way through the entire escort roster, he gets more desperate and sloppy, making Jeannie suspicious.

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'Zipper': Sundance Review