Bataille à Seattle

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.

There are many that will dismiss this film as boring, lame or whatever and I myself was a bit dubious as a Seattle native and somebody that worked downtown during the riots. However, after seeing "Battle in Seattle" last night in Los Angeles, I must say that I really enjoyed it. Working within the reality of the film business (the need of star power, dramatization, distribution and financing) I thought Stuart Townsend did a great job of telling a fictional story about people within the historical context of the WTO Seattle Ministerial. He was also able to connect the film to what is happening today through some factual statements in the prologue and epilogue that reminded the audience that the WTO is still a presence in everybody's lives (whether they know it or not). The film's website also exists to educate viewers on the WTO. There were a lot of subtle details that I remember from that week that he included that I was able to appreciate (especially the Pine/Broadway riot which I was an observer of from the Bauahus Cafe on Pine). Stuart Townsend, Charlize Theron and Martin Henderson were also at the screening and talked for about 30 minutes about the film.

Stuart said that he was not trying to make a documentary about the WTO (since three already existed, one of which I've already seen ("30 Frames a Second: The WTO in Seattle") and wanted to make a film about people. Overall, I think he did a great job. The only minor, personal beef I had was the casting of Tzi Ma as Governor Locke. Locke does not speak with any trace of an accent and hearing Ma ranting on screen with a slight accent was just weird for me (being very familiar with Gary Locke...but nobody else will even bat an eye). A lot of people complained that the entire film wasn't filmed in Seattle, but that was the reality of financing. He mentioned that if he had to film in Vancouver to get the film made, so be it. Most of the key scenes/landmarks were shot in Seattle so you never really lost track of the Seattle vibe (believe me, I recognized every landmark on screen). Stuart mentioned that he learned a lot about the film making industry (from the point of a first time director) and how brutal it can be.

The WTO is obviously a topic most of Hollywood would not touch with a 10 foot pole. He also said that of the six or so years he spent on the project, only 29 days were actual filming days with the rest spent on research, production, editing etc. I have to give a lot of credit to Stuart for tackling this topic and seeing it to completion and fighting for distribution. It would be the equivalent of me trying to make a film around the Inniskillin Bombing which I do not remember when it happened back in 1987, but have heard of. I was able to shake Stuart's hand afterward and he was a very cool guy and tried to talk to everybody even as his publicist tried to drag him away after the screening.

i expected the polarized opinions this film received from some of the commentators here... there's one that said something about '10 years later/very little progress'. something about 'small steps'... but they're wrong. LARGE steps have been taken by the businesses. how many of you know about the limited access corridor being constructed from Mexico to canada through the midwest? a turnpike that will carry goods made outside of US to places nearby this route. the contract was given by bush's people to a very, very wealthy construction firm from spain. the owner is one of the richest men in the world. the materials used to build this turnpike will be shipped into Mexico ports and then dispersed where needed. probably using mostly non American labor.

now maybe some of you will understand part of the point of this movie. there IS no such thing as countries anymore. not with administrations such as the present one. it's big business interest. and if you're a big business the bush's will do business with you. witness the bin laden family, which have been 'buddies' with the bushes from 'way back'... witness grand daddy bush doing business with the Nazis as they began their quest for world cleansing and domination. all this is documented and accessible if you just do a little work looking for it... why not start with Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's(democrat/Ohio) explanation of the corridor on u tube? that'll help make believers out of the skeptics. this isn't some 'quack' with a conspiracy theory.

my location is listed as netherlands. i left the US b/c i don't like what the people in control are doing and this is my way of protest. not paying them with my tax dollars. each of us have to find a way to react to this piecemeal sale of the US...hopefully non violent no matter what the response... the people with the money do, after all, control the militaries. and not just the American one. or you can just not believe...not do ANYthing and be surprised at what transpires... no review of a movie will MAKE you do anything. that's up to you. good luck.

ps remember how easy it would be to check this out. as easy as it was to 'get HERE', internetwise...

"Labour itself is but a sorrowful song, The protest of the weak against the strong."

Frederick William Faber

As a liberal, I empathize with the protesters in the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. And I do empathize. The need for world organizations and big companies to consider the health of poorer countries before appropriating their resources is paramount.

In Battle in Seattle, director Stuart Townsend uses the stock devices of the docudrama: smoothly inter-cutting between scenes of police and protesters and expertly interspersing authentic footage with the dramatized. The feel is as if the audience is participant; the dilemma of how far either side should go in keeping the peace or disturbing it is palpable.

The drama is enhanced by fictionalizing the opposing forces through the lens of policeman Dale (Woody Harrelson) and his wife, Ella (Charlize Theron), both caught up in the escalating violence and too neatly tied to the issues of each side. The challenges of the protesters are also too deftly tied to a romance of the leader and a follower.

This facile mixing of truth and fiction leaves me a bit cold, as if I were the victim of a fraud because the reality of the historic event seems trivialized by clichéd romances and tragedies. I am always dismayed by the Michael-Moore-style loading of the left to the exclusion of the right's point of view: What are the purposes of the WTO? Has it been successful? How? These questions are rarely explored any more than the complicated motives and lives of the protesters.

But the docudrama succeeds in illuminating the WTO and its critics. As history has written, little progress has been made during the intervening decade even though the talks were stopped in Seattle. But as one of the combatants points out, only by small steps and persistence can the battle be won. And so went the Battle in Seattle.

I was at the battle in seattle...all 4 days of it....they cant get the days or times right....the gassing didn't start till after 5 pm in the afternoon on N30 not during lunchtime, we didn't march on the jail till December 3rd not December 2nd, and the Broadway and Pine Riots or as we locals call it the city sanctioned gay bashing wasn't started because of a cop flipping out but rather when a few people started shaking the police car with a cop in it...they don't bring up the fact that in the mornings people came downtown with coffee for police and brooms to clean up the mess...they don't talk about the peaceful protest that stayed on the sidewalk in response to said Broadway riots...and they didn't talk about how people were boxed in at 2 am when bars close infront of 3 packed bars. for a movie yeah its a good watch but for a look at the Battle In Seattle they could have done better in getting their facts right