The Contender

The Contender (2000) is a sharp political drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Rod Lurie. President Jackson Evans — Jeff Bridges, relaxed and strategically warm — nominates Senator Laine Hanson as the first woman ever to serve as vice president. Congressman Sheldon Runyon, played by Gary Oldman in a controlled, quietly cutting performance, has a different candidate in mind and is prepared to go low.

Unverified rumors about Hanson's sexual past surface in the hearings. Joan Allen plays her refusal to engage with those accusations as a matter of principle, not cowardice — and the film is smart enough to let that choice cost her something real. Sam Elliott and Christian Slater apply pressure from opposite directions. The machinery of character assassination gets its full technical treatment.

Lurie built the script as a provocation about what political power actually asks of women who want it. The film's central dilemma has not aged into irrelevance. Stream The Contender (2000) on iFILM.