Spacey delivers the goods in ‘Casino Jack’

It hurts too much to laugh.

That's what Adlai Stevenson said when he lost the 1952 presidential election to Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Stevenson's full assessment of his defeat: "It hurts too much to laugh, but I'm too old to cry.")

And "it hurts too much to laugh" pretty much sums up my reaction to "Casino Jack."

Perhaps someday we'll be able to laugh about Jack Abramoff, whose machinations as the George W. Bush era's favorite lobbyist-about-town -- the town being Washington, D.C. -- led to, among other things, corruption and murder.

At least the timing's good; the real Abramoff just completed a four-year sentence for fraud, corruption and conspiracy, and is now a free man.

So maybe he'll be able to catch "Casino Jack" and chuckle over his crazy exploits.

But the rest of us may choke on those chuckles instead, considering how often "Casino Jack" seems caught between incredulity and amusement when it comes to the title character and his antics.

If you want a high-dudgeon Abramoff bludgeoning, Alex Gibney's documentary "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" (now on DVD) does the job.

This "Casino Jack," from director George Hickenlooper (who died at 47 last October) has a different agenda.

Sometimes, however, it's tough to figure out exactly what that agenda is.

If "Casino Jack" is intended as a scathing satire of corrupt Washington politics, it's not sharp enough to draw blood. If it's supposed to be a psychological portrait of a contradictory character, there's plenty of contradiction, but not nearly enough insight.

What "Casino Jack" does have going for it, however, is a title-role performance by master snake-oil salesman Kevin Spacey, who's always good for a full-throttle shot of diabolical glee.

Not that there's anything diabolical about Jack Abramoff. At least not in his mind.

On the contrary. He's one of the chosen people, in more ways than one.

An observant Orthodox Jew who keeps kosher, a faithful family man, Abramoff has big plans -- for himself, for his wife (Kelly Preston) and kids, for the world at large.

As he reasons in a furious man-in-the-mirror soliloquy that opens the movie, "Mediocrity is where most people live," the "elephant in the room" that prompts "those of us who understand the disease of the dull" to "do something about it."

What does Jack Abramoff do? He rolls up his sleeves and goes to work.

As a high-rolling, glad-handing lobbyist, Abramoff leads members of Congress -- including pal Tom "The Hammer" DeLay (Spencer Garrett), the House's Republican whip -- on luxury golf odysseys in exchange for their votes to keep minimum-wage laws out of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth where mostly Chinese immigrants slave away in garment factories.

But he's just getting started.

With even more freewheeling associate Michael Scanlon ("True Grit's" Barry Pepper), Abramoff launches a plot to bolster their bottom line by charging Indian tribes outrageous fees to promote their casinos. Their casino connections extend to Florida-based gambling ships, thanks to an alliance with a slimy mattress magnate (an especially sleazy Jon Lovitz). And that leads to a deadly connection with a trigger-happy mobster ("Entourage's" late great Maury Chaykin, who died in July).

Hickenlooper ("Factory Girl") and screenwriter Norman Snider ("Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss") pack "Casino Jack" with maximum wheeling, dealing and scamming -- to say nothing of such real-life Republican politicos as Ralph Reed (Christian Campbell), Grover Norquist (Jeffrey R. Smith), Karl Rove (David Fraser) and Bob Ney (Jeff Pustil), the Ohio Congressman who did time for his involvement in Abramoff's corrupt schemes. (There's even a brief appearance by W. himself, thanks to canny use of a wide-angle lens and a convincing-enough stand-in.)

The fact that "Casino Jack" names names is commendable. But there are times you'll wish you had a scorecard to track the supporting characters, including a Chippewa official (Graham Greene) suspicious of Abramoff's slippery moves and Scanlon's fiancee (Rachelle Lefevre ), who eventually blows the whistle on her duplicitous intended. (With a little help from her friends at The Washington Post, that is.)

And while there's plenty of breezy top-of-the-world banter from our
(anti-)heroes before their fall, "Casino Jack's" so busy presenting the gory details you never really get a sense of the "why" behind the "what."

That said, however, the "what" often proves undeniably diverting, in a can't-look-away-from-the-train-wreck way.

For that, of course, thank "Casino Jack's" chief partners in crime.

As the can't-stop-scamming Scanlon, Pepper provides energetic, occasionally hyperkinetic support, reveling in his character's reckless abandon.

But it's hardly a surprise that Spacey's diamond-drill performance turns out to be the best reason to catch "Casino Jack."

It's not what you'd call a deeply felt portrayal -- the jury's still out on whether Abramoff has what most of us would describe as feelings -- but when it comes to preening, posturing and outsmarting everybody (including himself), Spacey delivers the goods and then some.

He's a rogue with a self-justifying twinkle in his eye, someone who's an expert at gaming the system.

Of course he got caught, but as "Casino Jack" reminds us, he's only one little cog in Washington's great big political machine -- a perpetual-motion assemblage that seemingly comes with endlessly interchangeable parts.

Contact movie critic Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.