'Battle in Seattle'
MOVIE REVIEW
Director Stuart Townsend can't quite properly portray the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization.
They call it "Battle in Seattle," but it's safe to say that the mayhem that took place in that city's streets over five days in 1999 does not have the name recognition for most Americans of Gettysburg, Iwo Jima or even Bunker Hill. Stuart Townsend's new film attempts to change all that, with mixed results.
Previously known as an actor, Townsend was determined to make his writing and directing debut with a film that combined entertainment with social relevance. The 1999 Seattle event, when about 40,000 protesters caused the cancellation of the first high-level World Trade Organization conference to be held in the U.S., seemed a good bet to do both.
Townsend's sincerity, his admiration for the idealism of the people behind the anti-WTO protests, is never in doubt, but combining drama with historical re-creation is frankly a challenge his filmmaking skills are not up to. On both sides of the camera, "Battle in Seattle" gives what happened the feeling of a children's crusade.
The first problem "Battle in Seattle" has is that outside of those who are in it and those who protest against it, few people know exactly what the World Trade Organization is, what it does or how it operates. Townsend attempts to remedy this with a brief introduction outlining the information in a snappy way, but the reality is that when unidentified talking heads say the WTO stands for "money values ruling over human values," we simply have to take that on faith.
A larger concern is that, whereas Townsend has said repeatedly that he wants his film to succeed as dramatic entertainment, this is considerably simpler said than done. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has proved more doable to re-create the on-the-ground feeling of the event than to people it with convincing characters.
Two of "Battle in Seattle's" protagonists meet cute the day before the protests begin, both part of a team hanging an anti-WTO banner on one of the city's construction cranes. He's Jay (Martin Henderson), one of the leaders of the protest, and she's Lou (Michelle Rodriguez), a woman with a bit of anarchy in her past.
Gradually we meet the rest of Jay's leadership team, including the free-spirited Django (André Benjamin of the music group OutKast) and the conflicted lawyer Sam (Jennifer Carpenter). They're determined to stop the conference, but they want to do it nonviolently.
