ThiefHott Too much of everything

Wordiezett So much average

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Tom Dooley This is a film concerning the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organisation meeting. Protesters had planned in advance to disrupt the meeting seeing the WTO as an unelected, unaccountable, self interest group that continues to put profit before people and denies legitimate scrutiny a voice.It has a few stories on the go to show what happens to both sides of the argument(s). Woody Harrelson plays a violent cop whose pregnant wife gets caught up and Channing Tatum is here in an early role also as a cop. Ray Liotta plays the City Mayor who is torn between having a successful summit and not wanting to use violence.There are a number of issues touched on here and the film struggles to be balanced to both sides – using the individual stories to illustrate how both sides do wrong. That could be where it falls down – it tries too hard to be reasonable. The WTO is a self interest group who uses sticking plaster solutions to Global problems as a smokescreen to its bloated ambitions of World trade and the never ending greed engendered by the profit motive.The acting though is all very good, but it does get a bit over emotional on one too many occasions. In stressful situations – feelings do run high and as such the lapses here are forgivable. Having said all of the above I still thought this was a compelling watch and so can recommend.

samdiener I just finished watching the Battle in Seattle feature film. I wanted to like it more than I did. I was aware of David Solnit's (one of the Direct Action Network's organizers) concerns about it (see www.yesmagazine.org/issues/purple-America/the-battle-for-reality for a summary, an interview with the director and Solnit at www.democracynow.org/2008/9/18/battle_in_seattle_with_a_list, and a participatory historical website at http://realbattleinseattle.org/), before I started watching. The film had a great, dramatic, even potentially epic, subject, and a noble idea to tell the story from multiple points of view. I applaud its ambition and I'm glad I saw it. The mini-film essay by Stuart Townsend, labeled "The Making of the Battle of Seattle" (included on the DVD) is actually quite great describing the film Townsend wanted to make. He wanted to make a film fictionalizing and personalizing, through the eyes of multiple characters, the struggles that converged in Seattle during the WTO conference. It's an ambitious goal, and Townsend deserves praise for attempting it.Unfortunately, however, Townsend didn't succeed in making that movie. There are so many characters that they got lost in the cross-cutting, and remained schematic and two- dimensional. The film doesn't portray the activists either as full-blooded people nor does it at all accurately portray the organizational structures used. It refers to affinity groups a couple of times, but fails to actually show any actually discussing anything. The scenes outside the jail at the solidarity rallies for those inside come alive, but inside the jail, instead of a hubbub of discussions, debates, singing, and workshops, Townsend repeatedly portrays a group of silent, sullen, defeated arrestees. The exception is Django, an upbeat African-American pro-turtle activist, who gets one of the best moments in the film when, trying to cheer everyone else up, he says that now everyone will know what the WTO is, but then instantly amends that claim to say, "Well, they probably won't know what it is. But they'll know it's something bad."The attempts at portraying a budding romance between two apparently heterosexual activists is not written well enough to be at all believable. And, to mention just one of potentially many political concerns, there were no gays or lesbians in Seattle protesting?And we're supposed to believe that a cop whose pregnant lover has just been attacked by a police officer, mistaking her for a protester, and causing her to miscarry, is going to take out his anger by chasing a lone demonstrator (a key organizer, of course), and personally beat him bloody? And then the same police officer is going to enter the jail and apologize for doing it?There's two ciphers of character who could potentially have been quite fascinating, a Doctors Without Borders activist (who gets one good moment when he asks the trade representatives how they'd feel if their children were the ones who were going to die because they couldn't afford medicines because of the policies they were making) who is trying to pressure the WTO from within, and a trade minister from an un-named African country. But we never see them as anything but cardboard stand-ins for a position, never see them struggling with a decision, and never hear them articulate any kind of point of view about the protests and the impact they are having.The direction at times was quite good, but I'm not sure it was such a good idea to mix in the real footage because the real footage is so much more dramatic and powerful than the fictional, watching it just made me wish I were watching a documentary instead of a docudrama. Townsend, in his "Making Of" segment, voices the hope that the film will motivate folks to want to learn more. The movie has motivated me to want to watch "This is What Democracy Looks Like" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265871/) and "30 Frames a Second: The WTO in Seattle" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315734/), so at least to that extent, the Battle in Seattle succeeded.

btm1 The story in this film is merely a framework for its attack on policies of the World Trade Organization that give lip service to environmental protection, workers rights, medicine for poor nations, etc. It is a dramatization of actual protests at the Seattle WTO meeting. What I particularly liked about the film was the way it sympathetically told the story from the perspectives of various sides in the conflict between protesters and the city, as well as the perspective of conference delegates from third world countries and NGOs. The Mayor thought he would score political points by getting the WTO to hold its meeting in his city. He was aware that there would be protests but had met in advance with the protests leaders and gotten pledges that the protests would be non-violent. In return he gave his word that police would only arrest any demonstrators who disrupted the proceedings. Decades ago the Mayor had been a participant in protests against the Vietnam War so he was reluctant to use any sort of violence against the protesters. Labor Unions planned a peaceful march in protest of the meeting, and had agreed to confine the march to a designated path. His Chief of Police assured him in advance of the meeting that the police were prepared to handle the demonstrations without getting any bad publicity.Things didn't go as the Mayor and Police Chief expected. Instead of picketing the conference site, the environmental protesters prevented delegates from reaching the meeting site. Then the Labor marchers deviated from the agreed path and also started breaking storefront windows. The Governor wanted the Mayor to declare an emergency curfew and call out the National Guard, but the Mayor believed that would worsen the situation. The Chief of Police got the Mayor to authorize use of tear gas and batons. The pregnant wife of a member of the police riot squad worked downtown and got caught in a violent attack on the nonviolent protesters.We see the story develop from the viewpoints of the Mayor and of the riot squad police officer and his wife, as well as from the perspective of the organizers of and participants in the environmental protests. We also briefly follow a conference NGO delegate who is at the conference to try to persuade the WTO to allow impoverished third world nations to obtain medicines at a lower cost. We also briefly see the conference from the viewpoint of a delegate from a third world nation who is trying to persuade the WTO to change its policies that the WTO purports helps impoverished nations, but in reality oppresses them. We also get the perspective of a TV reporter assigned to cover the convention, which President Clinton is scheduled to attend.

u-man-1 this is one of the best films i have seen in years. as the theme of the movie should interest everyone in the world, it is a must to be televised around the globe. giving hope in a hopeless battle for humanity and against the globalization, this movie is perfect for anti-capitalism demonstrators. people who liked "Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368314/), will also like this film. the half-documentary style of the story suits very well and is wonderful told to the viewer. showing both sides of the protest, in a fairly amount, is one of the reasons, i loved this movie for. SPOILER so one of the best moments is, as the cop Dale (Woody Harrelson) is speaking with the prisoner Jay (Martin Henderson) and apologize for his actions. SPOILER END it would be nice to see much more movies like this from Hollywood. because this is something you will remember, maybe your whole life. FX and millions of dollars production-costs cannot replace such powerful messages, which will instantly be burned in your brain. a clever story, brilliant cast and a director who have balls of steel, make this one a masterpiece. cannot recommend enough, to watch this movie.