Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation examines the American appetite for fast food and the consequences that follow from it, moving between a fast food chain's corporate offices and the industry that supplies its restaurants. Don Anderson, a marketing executive, learns that contaminated meat has reached the chain's flagship burger and sets out to find how it happened. His investigation takes him away from California to the plants and feeding operations where the product originates, and what he encounters there changes how he sees his employer and the business he promotes. Around his search, the film follows other people touched by the same industry, including immigrant workers, a teenager employed at a restaurant, and a rancher.

Richard Linklater directed and wrote the screenplay, adapting Eric Schlosser's book. It was his eleventh film as director, arriving after A Scanner Darkly and before Bernie. The large credited cast of 52 includes Greg Kinnear as Don, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano, Luis Guzmán, Ashley Johnson and Kris Kristofferson, and the production was handled by Jeremy Thomas and Malcolm McLaren with backing from companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The film was released in November 2006 and runs 116 minutes. Its worldwide box office came to about 2 million dollars, a modest return. On IMDb it holds 6.3 out of 10 from 26,000 votes and on TMDB 6 out of 10 from 415 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 5.9 out of 10 from 146 reviews, placing professional and audience assessments close together.