Oldman film wins political award

Joan Allen as principled politician Laine Hanson

Gary Oldman's latest movie, The Contender, has been chosen as the winner of a special Hollywood award for films of social and political significance.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association will honour the thriller with its annual Alan J Pakula Award - named after the director of 1976's All the President's Men - at a ceremony on 22 January.

But it is questionable whether Oldman will join director Rod Lurie and cast members in accepting the award, following claims that the movie was re-edited as anti-Republican propaganda.

The Contender, also starring Jeff Bridges, Joan Allen and Christian Slater, focuses on a fictional Republican attempt to derail the nomination of a female Democrat Laine Hanson as vice-president.

Oldman as Shelly Runyon presiding over V-P confirmation hearings

As she battles for election, Hanson is the victim of an attack on her personal life, and stories of sexual deviancy are spread.

She is torn as to whether she should fight back, or stick to her high principles and refuse to comment on the allegations.

In the end, she sticks to the moral high ground, and in the end is rewarded for it.

The BFCA, one of the US and Canada's largest film critics groups, said its 140 members chose The Contender because Hanson's "horrific" experience is "a taut and timely analysis of why our current electoral system is incapable of attracting the most noble of our leaders to higher office".

Christian Slater co-stars in The Contender

Previous winners of the Pakula award include Oscar nominees A Civil Action, based on a real-life toxic-waste legal battle, and The Insider, about the efforts of the tobacco insustry to silence a whistle-blower.

The Contender opened on 13 October in the US - a month before the presidential elections.

Shortly after, British actor Oldman was reported to have said the film's Hollywood studio Dreamworks had paid for the film to be edited to suit the political persuasions of owners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

The three men are high-profile supporters of the Democratic party.

Presidential: Jeff Bridges plays the US leader

Oldman's manager Douglas Urbanski backed the allegations saying the movie was "almost a Goebbels-like piece of propaganda".

He suggested the presidential election was a factor in the changes, which he claimed were paid for by DreamWorks and carried out by the film's writer and director Rod Lurie.

DreamWorks and Lurie have strongly denied there was any political motivation behind the final cut of The Contender.

The film opens in the UK in April.