Desertman84 After watching Mora Stephens' Zipper,a movie about a politician who's got a sexual addiction towards escorts,it referred me to this documentary - Client 9:The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer - from where the main character of the film - Sam Ellis - was based from.This documentary was directed by Alex Gibney and worked together with Eliot Spitzer,the former Governor of New York who was involved in sex scandals that involved high class prostitutes working in escort firms.It tries to focus on his political career as well as the sex scandals that Spitzer got involved in.The interviews conducted in it involves the political friends and opponents of Spitzer as well as the people working in the escort services.Interestingly,the interview made on Angela Dupre,who happens to be Spitzer's regular client was portrayed by an actress.Apparently,it was both thought-provoking and informative as we get to realize how great Spitzer could have been politically as he was definitely great in acting as a "police" of Wall Street.Despite of his temper,he could have had a great future ahead as he could have been a possibly the "first Jewish President" of the United States.Both his friends and foes attested to his capabilities.Too bad that his inability to resist women led to a sex scandal and unfortunately the so-called "poster boy" for politicians involved in it despite having more popular ones involved such as the likes of Bill Clinton,John Edwards and even Newt Gingrich.It was also interesting to see how the so-called beautiful women work as escorts despite the fact that they are probably the ones who are less likely to be due to the fact that they are going to have the talent to succeed in the real world.One would definitely be bothered how much the United States has ingrained the attitude of materialism in its culture.Overall,this is one complex documentary that is more about Spitzer himself.

gavin6942 An in-depth look at the rise and fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, including interviews with the scandalized, former politician.This is just about the greatest political documentary ever made. Rarely do I give a film more than a 7, but this is pure 10 all the way. Not just covering the sex scandal, this film gives a broader look at Spitzer's career, even touching on his childhood and upbringing. There is plenty on Wall Street, and we get to learn a bit about the call girl industry.Should Spitzer have been taken down? Of course. Having an affair may be excusable, but engaging in a relationship with a prostitute is a crime, and we need to hold attorneys and politicians in higher standing than that. But just because he made this mistake, it should not subtract from the good things he did to help clean up corruption.

lufts If I could give this a zero, I would. I was a fan of Spitzer's early in his purported campaign against Wall Street. As a New Yorker, I had followed his silk purse career from the beginning.What the writer director does here is imply, use innuendo and ultimately avoid the bottom line single issue. Eliot Spitzer hired prostitutes and flew them all over the country, nay, the world, all the while prosecuting the same behavior in others. Worse, he was hiring young women, the same age as his own daughters. A truly sleazy individual.But it goes much farther than that. It totally ignores all of the financial shenanigans of Eliot and his father, which would have derailed any national run for office. His father, one of the largest real estate developers in NY, gifted Eliot numerous apartments which provided most of his multimillion dollar income. His father even paid the gift tax on it.Bernard also loaned Spitzer's campaigns millions of dollars, $5Million +, and worse, made enormous donations to the campaigns of those who were his son's "allies".That is almost unimportant next to the real issues. Spitzer's supposed campaign against Wall Street. In most of the cases that he made sure to hold press conferences when issuing subpoenas, he ended up settling for virtually nothing, or never even pursuing in court.Worse, he lost the most high profile prosecutions he pursued, including the one showcased in the movie against Dick Grasso of the NYSE (never mentioned in the movie that Grasso was vindicated in Federal Court) and was shown to have been nothing more than a personally vindictive, wildly undisciplined attorney general.By his own admission in the film, again, brushed over by the filmmaker, he admits to telephone calls to the people he was pursuing telling them they were 'dead' or going to be 'steamrolled' or "at war". What kind of prosecutor does such things? Ultimately, the director through innuendo and editing, implies that there was a conspiracy to bring Spitzer down. He even uses pro Spitzer talking heads to imply that Spitzer would be the only "John" to be prosecuted under the Mann Act (I guess he never heard of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson) and then immediately quickly brushes past the fact that Spitzer, in fact, was NOT prosecuted. He then again uses a talking head to claim that the entire investigation was a set up simply to leak Spitzer's involvement with the Emperor's Club prostitution service to the NY Times. Huh? The most liberal newspaper in the country, which almost singlehandedly had made his career was now the demon of his destruction? What he completely ignores are the simple facts of the case. There was not a single notice of an illegal transaction noticed by the Feds, but many transactions designed to specifically skirt the federal law that requires ANY cash transaction of $10K or more to be reported (some reports said dozens of such transactions). Spitzer repeatedly made transactions of $5K at a time to pay his $10K/day hooker. The law that was designed primarily to ensnare money launderers as a result of the cocaine wars of the 1980's is what caught him.The size of the this ring, whose owners were sent to federal prison, is demonstrated by the fact that when they were arrested in their apartment, they had more than $1 Million in cash in a safe in their bedroom. This was no small time hooker service, but a major international escort service which included members of the royal family as clients - oh yeah, I guess since THAT came out, it wasn't really an attack just on Spitzer - another fact noted, and whitewashed by the director.Did Spitzer make enemies? Of course. But the idea that Hank Greenberg or Ken Langone brought him down is not only foolish, it's insulting. Were they the ones hiring the hookers? The director also compares Spitzer to fallen pols like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich and others who engaged in extramarital affairs. As bad as they were, they were NOT committing crimes and certainly NOT at the same time they were specifically empowered to prosecute the very crimes they were committing.That Spitzer has any credibility is a sad reflection of the current state of the body politic.Spitzer is a brilliant individual with an extreme case of narcissistic personality disorder.Had the filmmaker used the forum to dissect the hubris that ultimately brings down so many of these types, he might have added to the conversation.Instead, this film looks like it was bankrolled, as Eliot's whole career was, by his father.

meeza I am going to be your escort to my review of the documentary "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer". OK, maybe wrong choice of words, and I probably won't rise to the documentary movie review occasion; please don't say "you called it". Anyways, Alex Gibney's documentary is a provoking look at the former New York Governor whose scandal of being a preferred customer of "The Emperors Club" escort service cost him an uprising political career that could have landed him a future presidential seat in the White House as this country's first Jewish President. This documentary could have been easily called "The Last Emperor" but I am sure Oscar-winning Director Bernardo Bertolucci would have taken issue. "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer" shows many facets of the scandal and its underlying pants, I mean parts, that sure do not defend Spitzer's whorish actions but do reveal that he was a marked man by several Republican political enemies. Gibney excels in revealing Spitzer's shining political moments in bringing down Wall Street corruption geezers. However, he does not glamorize Spitzer at all; even the former Governor speaks and presents himself in the documentary with a remorseful demeanor by not externalizing his downfall on others. The documentary does showcase that other elected officials have been in similar scandals and are still in their political seat, and Spitzer is not. Gibney also reveals the fact that the "15 minutes of fame" Spitzer Emperess gal was not so much Ashley Dupre (he only traveled Ashley's waters one night at the Mayflower Hotel), but it was another Emperor escort named Angelina who was requested by Spitzer several times. Angelina does not appear in the documentary but does reveal info to Gibney; an actress was used in representing to reveal what Angelina had to say about their Elliot & Angelina jolly close encounters of the $10,000 a night kind. The most colorful character of this documentary is not Spitzer, not the call girls, not the Wall Street geezers; but it was a political consultant named Roger Stone who was hired by one of Spitzer's main enemies to help bring Eliot down. The flamboyant Stone is not a bit stone-faced in boldly revealing his swinger lifestyle and his large tattoo of Richard Nixon. Alex Gibney is an Oscar-winning documentarian, and he continues to prove his worth by fully revealing issues and subjects as he does in this engaging documentary. Spitzer did have sexual relations with "that woman, and that other woman, and that other woman", but at least Spitzer spits out his regrets with earnest humility in this insightful documentary. So yes, call it in and book it as a must-see documentary. **** Good