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Dir. Stuart Townsend
Rating: 5.2 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
One element behind the genius of the HBO TV series The Wire was the intricacy of its interwoven narratives: The way in which each angle and tier was presented dead-on, seemingly without prejudice. Crossing up characters from all sides of the 'war' on drugs, the show shimmered with a palpable sense of realism. Actor turned filmmaker Stuart Townsend's debut effort about the anti-WTO riots in Seattle at the turn of the millennium, proves yet again just how difficult a trick that is to pull off. Here, he's assembled fictional characters from all sides -- the leader of a peaceful demonstration and his immediate friends; a medical philanthropist from Doctors without Borders; the Seattle mayor, who endures things going straight to hell after the peaceful protestors are laid to siege by a beleaguered police force; a cop who's pregnant wife gets inadvertently involved in the resulting fracas; an opportunist TV reporter who suddenly succumbs to the protestor's vision, and so on. Based on real events as it is, it still rarely rises above a kind of well-meaning melodrama. Townsend has assembled an impressive cast, including Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin, and girlfriend Charlize Theron, most of whom do credible work, but it's difficult for even seasoned pros to spout lines like "How do they keep fighting for a cause they know they can't win?" and "Isn't it time that people mattered more than profit?" Townsend also stacks the deck very much in favor of the dynamic, good-looking protestors, never really delving past the surface as to the evil of the WTO and its corporate sponsors. This results in a facile polemic, despite a few cursory nods to the contrary. Worse, yet, he takes a bleak and damning series of events, and turns them into an upbeat, "power to the people" ballad. His heart is in the right place, by all accounts, but I fear this film isn't going to win over very many new converts to the cause.
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