Film

Battle in Seattle (2007)

Director: Stuart Townsend

Movie review

From Time Out Chicago

The story of the mass protests at the World Trade Organization’s 1999 meeting in Seattle deserves to be told. That story does not deserve the “panoramic view of human drama” grafted onto it by this fictional account. Things get off to an inauspicious start when Jay (Henderson) and Lou (Rodriguez) meet cute while hanging an illegal banner from construction cranes high above the Seattle skyline. Their romance blossoms between arguments about protest tactics.

In a bit of screenwriting meant to be fair and balanced (ironic nod to Fox intended), Townsend also gives us: a tough cop (Harrelson) worried about the safety of his pregnant wife (Theron); the mayor (Liotta) trying to allow free speech without turning his city into a war zone; and an AIDS activist (Serbedzija) who just wants a pause in the riots so he can get the WTO to save some lives.

What’s missing is any sense of complexity. The WTO is painted as Big Evil, with little explanation of what’s so evil about the organization. That might not make for tidy drama, but it’s needed to make sense of things.

Extra praise should be given to cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (United 93), who gives the film a visual urgency that almost overcomes the turgid drama. And Benjamin turns a turtle-loving radical into the most interesting thing onscreen by far. We’d watch a whole movie about that guy.