The HBO film Recount, starring Kevin Spacey, John Hurt and Laura Dern, is about that strange and disconcerting period in our history when the Gore and Bush election in 2000 would not end, and when the eyes of the nation were on Florida and its strange machinations, its seeming corruption and its assumed incompetence.

It’s an odd movie for me to watch two days after an election that was over by 8:00pm Pacific time with Obama well over 300 electoral votes secured. Watching Recount put me back to those days when dimpled chads were all over the news ever day, and we wondered how this all could be going on.

It’s about Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State, who also happened to be Bush’s campaign leader in Florida. Systematically and possibly through her own oblivion she makes sure a recount cannot happen, partly because she lets the clock run out, and eventually the whole mess goes to the supreme court which in turn hands the election to Bush.

My jaw dropped a few times watching this, as I learned of new angles I had not seen before and others that I had forgotten.

What a different world it might have been, if Florida had not been crawling with Bushies in 2000. What a different world it might have been (and I have said this in this very blog a number of times before) if Gore had won his own state of Tennessee.

Go watch Recount — and learn about what went on during that strange and ugly time.

Rating: ***