MOO

Screenplay by Palmer Jessup

Based on a true story, Silkwood on a farm, so-so script relates the horrors of the beef industry and Big Agriculture’s grip on our food chain. Unevenly written, sometimes this literal shit show of an industry can be riveting, but it’s the people who disappoint. Kenny Barkley returns to his hometown as a lawyer for an Arkansas billionaire beef mogul after a viral video erupts about horrific bovine abuse. Anybody who attempts to expose the slaughterhouse is murdered and their death arranged to look like a suicide; Kenny discovers an industry-wide conspiracy of fattening the cattle to obscene levels, which causes the cows to cannibalize each other before they are clubbed to death; the farm’s tainted milk causes birth defects, and the water in town is fecally poisonous. Kenny thinks he’s found true love but he’s been seduced by a Jezebel* secretly working for the beef mogul to gather information on him. Kenny blows the whistle, escapes with his life, but he can’t save his farm friends. Ambitious script tries to be a suspenseful message movie and ends up being neither. Much a doo-doo about nothing.