Battle in Seattle actor Stuart Townsend’s directorial debut has been kicked around the release calendar for years now. At some point it was supposed to come out in early 2007, then it was going to be out last month, and now it’s been moved to an undetermined date this year. Normally that’s a sign of a total stinker, but honestly, Battle in Seattle is really good. You can read my review here if you don’t believe me.
Now the movie at least has a trailer, which is a good sign that it will come out sometime in our lifetime. With protests going on worldwide against the Beijing Olympics, it seems like good timing. You see, Battle in Seattle is a dramatization of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, when thousands of protesters clogged the streets and eventually caused riots, all to bring attention to the havoc wreaked by globalization. Yeah, it’s a complicated concept, but the movie plays out like a thriller, following various groups who are in Seattle at the time and sketching out the conflicts between the police and protesters that eventually led to violence.
The big names of the movie, from Charlize Theron to Andre Benjamin, wisely get a lot of screen time in the trailer, and the bombastic music and action scenes make the movie seem more like a high-octane thriller than the political effort it truly is. But hey, no shame in that! Battle in Seattle isn’t just a movie for protesting hippies, and has some genuine thrills in it; people going into it wanting to see shit blow up will probably be disappointed, but there’s something for pretty much everyone in this movie.
Head over to MovieSet.com to see the trailer and get a much better sense of what the movie is about. And go see it, uh, whenever it comes out. Provided it comes out. Will someone please release this movie already?
