The East

Certainly a good subject and a touchy one. We have several movies treating this subject, the environment, the corruption. When I left the cine I asked me the question : Could this be true and yes, certainly. And that its all about, if you leave the cine and keep on thinking about the subject and discuss it with others. I didn't knew that much about Brit Marling and this film awakened my interest. Good acting and she has many opportunities to go as actress, writer or director. The movie is a must see, but ... it is not that much of a thriller, the action scenes are rather short and don't ask that much of attention and that is what it is meant to be, because the movie target is to show us how Brit Marling integrates in the East, her feelings, her changes in ideas. But also in the emotional part I find this movie rather general. It seems that they don't want to go a bit in depth on the subject, keep it simple for the spectator, the client. Keep it mainstream. So, it is not an action movie, but either enters in difficult matters. The subject is although unique and a must see. The end of the movie. Seems that it was time to finish and so they did, a bit in a rush.

Just saw this movie courtesy of the San Jose Camera Cinema Club. This is a well-acted, thought-provoking movie that asks many questions about the balance between the excesses of corporate America and the excesses of violent anarchist groups fighting against them. (Think Weather Underground and the SLA.) The protagonist is a young woman working for a top private security company in the Washington DC beltway on behalf of those corporations. She's assigned to infiltrate an anarchist group called "The East" to prevent damage to her company's corporate clients. The ensuing exposition of the anarchist group's actions ("jams") makes for a very suspenseful and credible movie with many plot twists and turns including the ending of the movie, which is diffused with the credits. Nothing is as it seems, just like a good spy movie ought to be. So go see the movie and don't leave until the credits finish rolling.

The East: an environmentalist group following the philosophy of an eye for an eye. The movie follows Sarah, an agent trying to infiltrate The East. The movie was almost always exciting, but showed more of the emotional side of the characters.

I had a lot of fun with this one. At times I found myself holding my breath, and couldn't figure out why. The movie had a good flow to it, with enough exciting parts to keep you from falling asleep. My biggest complaint with the movie is it didn't go as deep into the emotional sides of things and felt like it wanted to be more of a mainstream movie because of it.

Truth is stranger than fiction so it's hard for a two-hour fictional film to compete with real examples of immorality, greed, and corruption that are rife within corporate America. Documentaries such as Enron, Who Killed the Electric Car, and Food, Inc. are more powerful because they're real. However, The East is solidly produced and acted as it dishes up fictional corporate misdeeds and misinformation perpetrated in the name of power and profit. The East humanizes its activist characters by giving insight into their varied and often mainstream pasts and into what fuels their battles against the system. Activists can be people too. At two hours, The East is limited in the number of corporate transgressions its activists can pursue and attempt to undermine, but it is an entertaining reminder of the type of malfeasance that goes on as it builds to a suspenseful and thought-provoking end. Good movie, not great, but worth watching.

The east is one of those movies the just fall from the tree, and when they fall you realize it is probably on of the best movies of the year. The fact some eco-terroristts decide to fight against large evil corporations(pharma,oil,coal etc.) makes the story even more interesting. Brit Marlin does a brilliant acting, being an undercover agent, but a human one, not one of those Hollywood super-heroes-I-save-the-world-again. The rest of the actors have a brilliant acting. If you want a "human" movie where intelligence and reality clash from start to finish, this is your movie, but remember to watch it slowly, so you can get the most of it.