Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Though I'm not, nor have I ever been, a proponent of Ayn Rand's philosophy, I have to admit the woman wrote great books -- and books that accurately predicted the state of the world in years to come. The Fountainhead predicted the rise of mediocrity and the corruption of art, and Atlas Shrugged, seen with today's eyes, seems so accurate it's scary for a novel published in 1957.

The film of The Fountainhead, despite starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, is not good. For years people have tried to get Atlas Shrugged on the screen, and now here it is, using a small budget, and divided into three parts. This is Part I.

The story concerns Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive fighting to keep the family railroad alive. Railroads are the only form of transportation due to the lack of oil. The world is in a fast state of decay; government agencies are corrupt, and thanks to her brother's inefficient running of the family company before she took over, her best workers are gone. People feel helpless. And now, the strongest industrialists are disappearing, their businesses being taken over by those with political interests, and a question is repeatedly asked - "Who is John Galt?" No one seems to know.

Surprisingly, while I recognized a few people in the cast, the majority of the stars were unknown to me (which I would have told you is impossible). Nevertheless, they do a good job. The beautiful Taylor Schilling is an effective Dagny, and like the main female character in The Fountainhead, she seems a cold woman without emotion. At the end of Part I, we finally see some. Grant Bowler is excellent as Henry Reardon, as is Graham Beckel as Wyatt. Rebecca Wisocky has all the right stuff for the evil Lillian, and we'll be seeing more of her later. Michael Lerner was certainly familiar, and he's Mouch. It's an effective cast in difficult roles, because each character represents a philosophy. Giving them flesh and blood is tough.

I look forward to parts 2 and 3.

I am not in the film industry so maybe I didn't catch some editing issues since I thought the move was great. Ayn wrote Shrugged in such a cinematic way, it was great to see the sweeping landscapes, witty banter, and some steamy scenes come to life on the big screen. It was really great to see some beautiful scenes of the rail and steel industry.

The actors were excellent, especially the main characters. Bowler and Schilling nailed it.

Now, I'm a huge fan of the book, so I'm a bit biased towards the story, but I thought the movie was entertaining, paced well and held true to key aspects of dialogue and scenes. I think people will enjoy it even if they haven't read the book, and hope it inspires people to read the book.

From the sounds of it, Part 2 and 3 are a go and will be released Tax Day 2012 and 2013.

There are other reviewers which have chosen to discount this movie because it was made on a relatively small budget, has no major Hollywood stars, or because it takes place just slightly in the future, instead of the distant past.

However, as a big fan of the book and given the current US and global political climate and turmoil, I would rather see this movie made now, under the conditions described above, than have to wait another 50+ years to see it hit the silver screen.

The filmmakers plausibly weaved the original Ayn Rand novel into the present without sacrificing much in the process. Combine that with solid acting and the overall feel of the movie, and they have delivered an enjoyable movie that I will see more than once in the theater, which is rare for me.

Not once did I feel that I was watching a movie that was "thrown" together as some have suggested, or that sacrificed quality or story. Instead this had nearly all of the look, feel and polish that you would expect to see in a big-budget Hollywood movie, with the sole exception of the A-list actors.

My fear though is that many people will skip this movie either because they have not read the novel or because they just don't hear about it. My wife is a perfect example as she does not plan to see it with me because the premise of the novel (which she has not read) did not interest her when I described it.

My biggest criticism is that this movie is too short (90 minutes long) and ended fairly abruptly. Given the amount of material involved, and that it is being split into 3 movies, the first movie could have/should have been at least two hours long.

Ayn Rand's motto was "Check your premises" before entering into any logical argument. The screenwriters of ATLAS SHRUGGED failed to heed her advice, resulting in an antiquated, self-destructive show that plays like a cliffhanger TV episode (think: "Dallas") posing as feature film.

Rand's '50s novel is updated to 2016, with an intro montage informing us that gas at the pump costs over $39 per gallon, commercial air travel is no longer feasible (we do see a private jet later in the film, when convenient), the Dow is at 4,000, and railroads are back in pre-eminence in America. Add to that a mythical domestic steel industry in full flower, ignore the rest of the world and you have the idiotic starting point for this science fiction (minus the science) exercise.

The best-selling novel with its legion of fans deserved, even at this late date, a first class treatment, perhaps by Oliver Stone (in his WALL STREET mode) or by Hollywood's right of center statesman Clint Eastwood. As an indie production perhaps Mel Gibson as director, but his right-wing credentials include religious fanaticism, a no-no for the atheistic Objectivist cult.

So we get a fan-based production, with executive producer Mike Marvin, who I remember well from HOT DOG...THE MOVIE. If that sounds a bit odd, while watching ATLAS SHRUGGED I recalled my favorite similar film, going back to the '70s, Harold Robbins' THE BETSY, which had a plot line of family dynasty in the auto industry and the industrial wars therein, parallel to ATLAS' story involving a family railroad dynasty of the Taggarts.

Robbins as pulp novelist had a philosophy underpinning his sexploitation works -namely hedonism. Rand's Objectivism is quite different, but strip it away from both novel and film and ATLAS SHRUGGED is a dated potboiler, Robbins-style but minus the sex.

Throughout the film it feels like we're in the '50s. Endless cocktail parties are staged with a dated look and glamor; the central concerns of aggressive captains (and a queen) of industry struggling for supremacy in a corrupt and government-intrusive environment is old-hat.

A young generation might theoretically be interested and respond to the adolescent dreamworld in which the entrepreneur is king and role model. After all, an impressionable youth in America today is likely to dream of $uccess as becoming the next creator of a Google or Facebook.

But what is the entry point for identification with this turgid film's characters? The "good guys", stalwart heroine Dagny Taggart and her romantic soul mate, steel magnate Hank Rearden, are cast with unknowns who act their roles as flatly as any pancake. It's daytime soap posing as nighttime programming.

Since a chief villain, Dagny's ne'er-do-well brother who shares ownership in their family railroad, looks like the young (with hair) Billy Zane, my mind wandered to reshaping the film as an exploitation direct-to-video effort: why not cast sister Lisa Zane as Dagny? The Zanes had teamed up in a wonderful B video 20 years ago titled FEMME FATALE which starred future Oscar-winner Colin Firth -now there's casting! Spicing up ATLAS SHRUGGED with some good, old-fashioned sexploitation could have made it watchable (it sure helped THE BETSY become a drive-in favorite).

Instead we have straw men galore to hiss at: notably Michael Lerner as a corrupt government official; Jon Polito on loan from the Coen Bros. as a scheming insider; a nonentity as a corrupt union boss who Dagny boots out of her office; a mealy-mouthed do-gooder asking Rearden for a handout (he gets a check for $100,000 to just go away) for one of his "aid-the-poor" causes; and other assorted "collectivists". This is a world of rugged individuals, and the film's laissez-faire capitalist message is laid on with a trowel.

Looming at every turn, and promising to take center stage in Part III of this projected trilogy, is the hack director Paul Johansson in the role of John Galt. A shadowy figure in trench coat and big hat, he suggests nothing more than jailbird lobbyist Jack Abamoff, reducing the film to pure camp with each appearance. Of course former movie producer Abramoff could have made a comical cameo in the role, but like Gibson, he is seriously religious and therefore from the wrong subset of the right-wing club.

Special effects of sleek new 250-mile-per-hour trains whipping along the American west are OK, but otherwise the film looks like a poverty row production and is a merciless talkathon. Called upon to spit out reams of boring dialog, Taylor Schilling as Dagny wears one expression throughout, becoming a hairdo in search of a character. She simply cannot carry a feature film on her shoulders (I know, "Taylor Shrugged"). I would have cast Cate Blanchett with '40s shoulder pads, but even a Reese Witherspoon or Sandra Bullock, among Hollywood's most bankable actresses, would have been preferable miscasting.

Grant Bowler is even worse as her romantic equal Hank Rearden -he has merely a smug expression throughout, whether batting off impudent nuisances or signing away most of his corporate empire after evil politicians and competitors get a ridiculous "anti-dog-eat-dog" bill passed through the legislature limiting every capitalist to owning just one company. That's the level of subtlety of this asinine script.

I don't want to make this a philosophical discussion on Ayn Rand. I rather talk about movie logic, and story construction. I've never read the book, and I'm not going to. It's the movie I'm reviewing and it has many problems.

The general level of production is much better than a syfy TV movie, but it's much lower than most big screen theater releases. For a $4.3M production (if IMDb is accurate), it's actually pretty impressive. I have no problems with the production or Taylor Schilling's acting. She does a good job as the driven woman executive. The problems lie elsewhere.

I don't know how hard they try to follow the book, but I think they would be better off to abandon the storypoints and keep the philosophy. It's written in the 50's by a woman who doesn't know much about business or steel. It was questionable at its time but is incredibly outdated today. I don't know why the filmmakers believe steel would sound futuristic by people today. They are talking about steel...Right? We're watching IronMan and Transformers and steel is the new material?

This is an apocalyptic world on film. There is nothing new there. Every other movie is the end of the world. But the filmmakers really need to set it up better instead of some generic oil crisis. They're trying so hard to gin everything up to recreate the Atlas Shrugged storyline that it has no relevance to today's world. Instead trying to adapt the feel of the book, I think they try to recreate the book for today. Maybe it made sense when it was written, but it makes no sense today. It makes 'Red Dawn' look realistic.

I have many other problems with the movie logic here. Let's just say I rather not get bogged down. It's not a bad production if they could make the story more logical.