Battle in Seattle is a Long, Hard Slog

Before last night's screening of SIFF's opening film Battle in Seattle, amidst all the self-congratulatory speeches, Mayor Nickels remarked that the 1999 WTO riots are "strongly rooted in the fabric of our city" and that every Seattleite would be well-served to have their feelings of the events "validated by an outside perspective." We'd be apt to agree---if only the outside perspective that followed wasn't such ham-handed dreck.

Battle in Seattle isn't as bad as it could have been (i.e., Crash). Stuart Townsend is a capable first-time director who keeps the storylines moving and makes great use of archival footage. But it's the script (also by Townsend) that needed some major work. Everything is cliché to the nth degree, and a wee bit of subtlety would have gone a long way. It was right around the time when a pregnant Charlize Theron gets caught up in the tear-gassed mêlée, only to end up billyclubbed by a cop that we realized just how misguided the film was. Of course, there's terrible dialogue galore (says a newscaster of the protesters: "How do they keep doing it? How do they keep putting themselves on the line?"), Gary Locke with a near-Charlie Chan accent, enough time amidst the chaos for a jailhouse romance, and a slew of one-dimensionally evil WTO delegates from the developed world. Plus, there's the problem of showing a Seattle-set movie only partially filmed in Seattle to a local crowd. Here we are Downtown, there we are in Vancouver, here's the Paramount, there's some Canadian department store. There they are on Capitol Hill, and here's a chase scene through an empty cathedral (whaaaa?) down the block from the Stranger offices (double whaaaaa?).

Still, there's no audience we would have rather seen this film with than last night's. There was a lot of proud Seattle sentiment coursing through the friendly confines of McCaw Hall. The audience cheered for all the activists' victories and pat-on-the-back diatribes, hissed at a news footage appearance of Howard Schultz, and snickered at a mutual apology between a protester and the cop who beat his ass. The film ain't that great, but we pity those who watch it without the benefit of an energized Seattle crowd.

Andre Benjamin (née Andre 3000)

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