Battle in 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 just came back from watching the film at the Toronto International film festival, and I absolutely loved it. It is brilliantly made and brilliantly acted. Stuart Townsend is a very talented man; he is sure to win a few Oscars before the end of his career. Battle in Seattle is a great work which simply tells the story of the WTO riots in Seattle, without an obvious bias (at least in my opinion). The film also uses real footage during some parts which really help those who were not present during the riots see that the film isn't exaggerating how horrific people's actions were (on both sides). I highly recommend this film for anyone who loves films that entertain and teach.

As we settled into our seats in Screen One in the Savoy Cinema, Dublin, Ireland, we wondered how on earth Stuart Townsend could exposit the intricate workings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to an audience who probably had no idea that it even existed.

We were not disappointed. From the breathtaking opening sequence, to the exhilarating ending, we were on the edge of our seats.

There were some outstanding performances – André Benjamin as Django (from the band Outkast) and Michelle Rodriguez as Lou (best-known in Europe for the TV series 'Lost') in particular were superb as two of the demonstrators. André injected an unfailing sense of humor and light relief into this serious topic, and managed to turn his unusual headgear into a clever statement about endangered species. Michelle gave her character exceptional depth and feeling, and handled a complicated emotional sub-plot with a mixture of both detachment and passion that worked so well on screen.

Charlize Theron played an innocent bystander, Ella, who was trapped in the violent maelstrom, with horrific consequences for both her own character and her character's husband.

During the Q&A with Stuart and Charlize at the end of the movie, an audience member stood up – an employee of the World Bank. She began by saying how cautious she was about coming to a movie about the WTO, but that she had to applaud Stuart for handing such a difficult subject so fairly. Her comments were echoed by a Trade Advocacy officer from a well-known Irish development charity, who congratulated him on creating a movie which managed to be both factually accurate and entertaining.

For anyone who has ever wished that this world was a better place, this movie is a must-see. For everyone else, this is a heart-warming movie about the power of the human spirit to overcome, to work together and to forgive.

(And as a footnote, Stuart gave free passes to the screening to protesters from the Campaign to Save Tara, who are still demonstrating against the construction of a new highway, the M3, in the historical valley at the Hill of Tara in Ireland. Stuart walks his talk.)

"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.