I was so depressed when I left this movie - depressed in a good way though, in the way the filmmakers wanted me to be. "The media has become an out-of-control circus," I thought to myself. Certainly not an original thought or insight, and not extremely different from many other movies and stories out there with a similar message. The difference with "Mad City", though, was that it didn't play this insight for satire or sly comedy. There's an anger and a sadness that runs through the entire movie - a burning regret that this is the way things have to be. The filmmakers could have easily reached for humor or gaudy overstatement to make their points (as was done, say, in "Network" or "Natural Born Killers") but instead they keep most everything at the human level, and that makes all the difference. We come to feel really bad for the Travolta character; the screenwriters' making him such a simpleton is, I'll admit, a bit manipulative, but as manipulations go it's a good one and a smart one - it lets us see the toll in human terms of the media frenzy. Dustin Hoffman and particularly Alan Alda are expert in their roles as media sharks, and the sort of Mutt and Jeff (or perhaps George and Lenny) relationship which Hoffman and Travolta get into here is really marvelous. It has beats of comedy to it, while never being anything less than totally serious (kind of like Hoffman and Cruise in "Rain Man" - though the film never strains for that connection).
I think of this movie often in conjunction with "Wag the Dog," Hoffman's other movie that year and for me it's no comparison: "Wag the Dog" is gleefully cynical, seems to take real joy in the media being so ever-present and the audience being so easily conned. For me, that rings as hollow satire; "Mad City" by truly trying to examine and get us to think about (not just laugh at) the media's power is miles away the better film.
