'Outrage' review

Jim McGreevey (Credit: Magnolia)

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Just how gay is Capitol Hill? Apparently, it's flaming—at least according to this explosive documentary from cine-raconteur Kirby Dick ("This Film Is Not Yet Rated"), who investigates the double lives of closeted gay politicians and tracks their abysmal pro-gay voting records. How guilty are they, the film asks, in oppressing the very community they belong to, and how complicit is the political establishment in fueling the hypocrisy?

The buzz: "Outrage" couldn't be more prescient, arriving in the wake of California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage and riding a swelling wave of recent gay marriage victories in states like Maine and New Hampshire.

The verdict: Scathingly and salaciously entertaining. No politician who's ever been poked by a gay rumor is spared, and oh baby, Dick sure is good at poking. The filmmaker is relentless in indicting a virtual congress of rumored closet cases, including Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former New York mayor Ed Koch, California Congressman David Dreier, and, of course, Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who reportedly bullied a former hook-up into silence by telling him, "I can buy and sell your ass a thousand times." Dick tracks down alleged ex-lovers, ex-wives, ex-everyone, who drop bomb after bomb, including one source that claims former Louisiana Congressman Jim McCrery used a college fraternity to recruit sexual partners. Binding it all together are acute interviews with an elite punditry—Larry Kramer, Hilary Rosen, Congressman Barney Frank, former governor Jim McGreevey—who comment on a kind of legislative gay bashing that permeates today's political culture, and how that reflects on the self-loathing politicians who get off on it.

Did you  know? If the film's conspiracy theories are to be believed, confirmed bachelor and Republican stalwart Charlie Crist conveniently got hitched in the months leading up to last year's presidential election once talk began to escalate that he was in the running to be John McCain's vice-presidential running mate.

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