“U.S. Government Inspected Beef.” No, not the saucy strapline for the gay adult film Shaving Ryan’s Privates. But the cumbersome advertising slogan of Dick and Mac’s burger joint in sleepy San Bernardino whose U.S.P. “Speed: that’s the name of the game” aims to please their drive-in customers by serving up a fresh delicious hamburger with a pinch of onion and a precise shot of ketchup and mustard from grill to counter in under thirty seconds.

“Cha-ching,” thinks struggling milkshake-maker salesman Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) who impressed by the speed and quality of both service and product (“this is the best burger I have ever had”), and inspired by the wholesome sound of the family name and the eye-catching concept of the golden arches, seizes upon the idea of turning what he calls a “yokel”-run local business into first a national franchise “from sea to shining sea” and then a multinational corporation which 63 years later is estimated to feed a staggering 1% of the world’s population – every day!

But as the title of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated tale of greed and ambition goes: There Will Be Blood. For as Ray Kroc says, “Business is war.” And if a competitor is drowning, he would think nothing of walking right over and putting a hose in his mouth. Good news for  shareholders, bad news for Dick and Mac (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) whom he cheats out of royalties and their family name. A ruthlessness which extends to his marriage to his ever-supportive and long-suffering wife Ethel (Laura Dern) whom he dismisses with a harsh one-liner: “I’d sooner die than give that woman one share of McDonald’s.”

The character of Ray Kroc, much like Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of Steve Jobs, does not come across as the kind of guy you would want to shoot the breeze with. For with put-downs like, “Contracts are like hearts: they’re made to be broken,” there would be more chance of him shooting you in the back. Hence Dick’s withering description of his business partner as a “wolf in the hen house”. However, the same cannot be said for the bag of ferrets that is Michael Keaton whose restless energy proves every bit as engaging as his comeback performances in Birdman and Spotlight.

The problem, though, lies in the screenplay by Robert D. Siegel (The Wrestler) which suffers from the same shortcomings as the mass-produced burgers in that it’s process-driven and light on quality. Yes, there are spikes of tension between Ray and the McDonald brothers and Ray and his wife, but by and large the emotional landscape mirrors the terrain of the American Midwest: flat and dry. A fitting description, too, for the linear timeline. If only director John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks) had followed Dick and Mac’s vision: “Better one great restaurant than fifty mediocre ones.”

Video courtesy of: The Weinstein Company

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Peter Callaghan
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