BootDigest
Such a frustrating disappointment
Wordiezett
So much average
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
wandereramor
For folks of the leftist persuasion there's not really been a lot of cheerful stuff in the news for the past decade or three. The trouble with normal, as they say, is that it always gets worse. Most political documentaries are the same way -- something terrible is happening, the polemical narrator assures us, and other than the go-out-and-do-something last ten minutes of the film things are kind of universally bleak.The Take opposes all of that, and is the rare piece of media in which the revolution is not just a vague series of values but an actual practise, made up mostly of hard work and disagreement, but moving forward in a positive direction nonetheless. Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein aren't the slickest filmmakers in the world, but they know enough to get out of the way and let the incredible story before them unfold. One of the few documentaries -- one of the few films period -- that I've left feeling genuine hope, this is a must-see for anyone who believes (or wants to believe) that another world is possible.
leerufong
namely that there ARE options available to us all. 8/10 for the message of hope, commiseration for our working/unemployed Argentine brothers and sisters. 6/10 for the quality of the film.there is so much unhappiness among the people of the world that ARE working, let alone those suffering war, poverty/sickness. Billions of workers' tax dollars bailing out banks and corporations, as decisions by the politicians of canada and the u.s.?!? You need to wake up if you do not realize the intent behind such policies. Why do so many people continue to accept idiotic and heartless "bosses" in the workplace? Their positions of power are supported by fear, and violence. We NEED movies like this at the very least to show us all the glimmer of light at the end of OUR long, dark tunnel..the direct democracy worked towards by the people filmed here, is the democracy i believe in. for me the most important lesson here is that the workers succeeded with the support of their Community.great things are possible when we work together. Occupy.Resist.Produce!Horizontalidad!!
nige l (explodingcat)
The little dudes taking on the big dudes. We all like to see it, and we love to see them win.The problem with this documentary is not so much the content but the lack of it. The story of Argentina is told by the film makers, and by the factory workers. Great, but they are not really experts, are they? An academic would have been far more credible. Unfortunately the film makers were loyal to ideas close to their hearts, and they should have been loyal to the truth, wherever that lies, I'm not sure as the film was partisan, to the point of cartoon. Unfortunately i left the cinema thinking it only told me half the story, and as such I couldn't trust it.Facts were replaced with chants. There was one scene of a riot which tried to make the rioters out to be heroes and the police out to be violent oppressors (rather than people doing a pretty fundamental and difficult job already without having a bunch of people throwing bricks at them)which didn't wash well with me, and the difficult issue of the workers taking a bunch of very expensive equipment was never really explored. Was it intended that those who paid for it would be compensated, or was it to be donated to them in the interests of trying to keep a business running? One of many questions never answered.The world isn't black and white. This documentary made it out to be just that, and as such, insults an audience which knows better
rowmorg
No one is more rad-chic than Naomi Klein, with her cool war-resister parents, alternative doctor father and militant feminist mother. She crossed Canada at 16 years old campaigning against nuclear power and wrote a hit book attacking globalisation in her 20s.Now she has made a feel-good movie out of the economic catastrophe that hit Argentina, by following the weary campaign of unemployed steel workers to join a couple of hundred other factory occupations and take control of their abandoned steel works.Klein and spouse Avi Lewis were in Argentina for some six months, with a crew of 16 and a budget of about C$1m, so we could certainly expect results. Whether this resounding endorsement of worker co-ops (slogan: Fire The Boss) is quite what the NFB had in mind is not clear.At a couple of points, I felt the film ruined Argentina offered was about the repulsive imp Carlos Menem and the murderous bourgeois traitors he represented. Who is going to purge those secret policemen who rubbed out some 30,000 lefties? When are those generals going to face a court? Why was Menem not in prison instead of running for president? But the survival tactics of the workers on the ground was a more humane story, and that is to Klein's credit.