The Worst Film Ever

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Battle in Seattle: Written and directed by Stuart TownsendThis docudrama is about the protests in Seattle(obviously) against the World Trade Organization that turned vicious and ugly in 1999. This takes a somewhat documentary style camerawork approach to the material. It follows a bunch of different people on both sides of the event humanizing them in an event that could have been enveloped entirely within its political ideologies. This is some emotionally charged material. Knowing that this actually happened helps push you to investing in the story. This does follow a large group of people around and it is a brief running time so you learn just enough about most of them to relate a bit. I did appreciate the fact that it doesn't demonize the people and make the protestors out to be these heroes. A lot of them aren't. A lot of the time the message they are trying to convey is taken over by anarchists or other people pushing violence. The cops are people with families and sometimes what they are experiencing at home or how the protests affect them as well. I know this sounds vague and partially generic. It's not. I just want you to find out for yourself what happens to these people caught in the grip of an unwieldly monster that neither side can control. It does sometimes come across as melodramatic and high in weak character development, a byproduct of the short running time I imagine. This was a good film. It put you right in the middle of the situation and never made it a piece of proganda. It showed you the people caught in the middle and what they lived through and experienced and why they might have decided to keep fighting when things might be looking dour for them. It has solid acting across the board. It never wears out its welcome. It is a solid movie. I give it a B.

I had never heard of this movie until it came on the TV the other day. It would have been better if it had remained that way.You don't get real idea of what the protesters were protesting about. Very much like the real protesters who were a mish mash of anarchists, drop-outs, ravers/party goers, manic depressives, attention seekers, show offs, chancers, and total dreamers. None of whom have any idea of reality because they cannot use logical thought processes.Anyway, Charlize Theron spends most of the movie crying in bed ignoring her husband Woody Harrleson who plays one of the riot police officers. I had high hopes for Theron when I first saw her years ago but she sure knows how to pick bad scripts and I do think her career is suffering from it. Woody (like Theron) will have been drawn to the project because of his environmental background and on paper he must have thought it would be a good move to accept the role. He, and Theron are both lucky the movie didn't finish their careers off. Ray Liotta plays the Seattle Mayor. The Mayor seems like a decent trusting guy but is essentially betrayed by the protesters rampage. Liottas performance, as well as Theron and Harrleson were mediocre at best. I don't blame them though. Clearly the director has absolutely no idea how to coax a performance from actors and if I were to hedge a bet I would say the director was personally caught up (emotionally) due to his obvious political views. Nothing wrong with putting your case forward in a movie, but you have to do it right and provoke a reaction from the audience, make them think. This completely fails to do that. The man completely forgot he was making a movie and like most extreme leftists the idea is always better than the reality. As you watch you will care nothing for any of the characters in the movie. Your constantly hoping something will happen, it never does because quite frankly very little actually happened in Seattle over those few days. A few protesters running around smashing windows will not give anyone the ammunition to make a full 90 minute movie.Its quite telling that since the movies release two years ago it only has around 40 reviews on IMDb. Just goes to show that no one, not even the protesters give a damn about this movie. They are probably to embarrassed.The favourable reviews of which there are far to many can only be from a few dreamers and those with an agenda. But seriously, pay them no attention because this is a really bad movie no matter what side of the political spectrum you come from.Avoid at all costs.

One has to applaud the interest in making a movie of something like the riots in Seattle in 1999. A hodgepodge of protest movements, environmentalists, anti-global trade people, anarchists, third-world trade protesters, and the list goes on.The makers of this obviously have a point of view, and that is of course, very sympathetic to the protesters (or whatever the term might be). Though, here and there, they seem to show some even handedness.I'm sure all know that basic story: The WTO, a world trade organization attempting to liberalize trade among nations around the world in order to raise all living standards (or so they claim). They seek to meet in Seattle to discuss the next steps in "global trade." Problem is, there are a lot of folks who really don't like the idea, not at all. So, as in the very first scene -- Democracy and the WTO are not at one with each other.The makers obviously favor the protesters, of course, but give some sympathy for the police and politicians of Seattle who are trying to preserve some sort of comity and sanity while an international meeting takes place in their city. You can tell they want the prestige of such a meeting, and want to keep a blow up from happening.They didn't get their wish.There are some mawkish and foolish subplots littered around here and there, fictionalized of course, but the central point is not badly done: Protesting in this day and age, in a time of plenty, for those who are protesting in the name of those who are in poverty.This is not a spoiler in the least, but anyone who has eyes and cable network TV knows, these protests, and the ones that followed, and will follow even form now, have achieved and will achieve nothing. Knowing that, gives a strange flavor to the movie -- that all they are doing, means nothing.No matter how much the Hollywood folks would like to think otherwise, and probably would, if they knew how much it would impact their pocket books.

If you like socialism, this is the movie for you; a boring exercise in leftist propaganda. A badly acted, badly made movie that will only appeal to people who actually support these nonsensical protests against capitalism.What's so annoying about these pseudo-documentaries is that they are so in line with the politics of Hollywood. Who, when they read the description of this movie, did not immediately realize that it is just another propaganda piece by the elites in Hollywood, designed to propagate their personal political agenda.I thought art was about being radical, not about blind conformity to the prevailing philosophy of the time. Will we ever have a mainstream movie about an abortion protest?Never. That would be TRULY radical. When are the people on the left going to realize that they are no longer counter-cultural? Their ideas are boring and non-compelling, which is why movies like this never succeed in spreading their ideology. Let's move on.