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It wasn't screened for Portland's pinko critics, but that didn't stop us from buying a ticket to Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. Sneaking suspicion: There may not be a Part 2.
Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
WW Critic's Score: 27
Ayn Rand's dumbbell-weight parable about the heroism of selfishness has always struck me as a petulant pseudo-philosophy: the political equivalent of Eric Cartman screwing you guys and going home. Which doesn't mean it can't make a good film, or at least a secretly alluring one: Movies with an upsetting viewpoint can be invigorating, and much of cinema's allure is its flaunting of profane pleasures, so why not try infinite pride? (Rand has never really been about greed, but a superior independence—disgust with everybody else in society.) But this jerrybuilt project doesn't plunge us into Randland so much as assume we've been marinating in in this bizarro world for a half-century: Villainous characters say things like "I'm giving the money to the less fortunate" with the same mustache-twirling sneer traditionally reserved for "I'm going to burn down the orphanage and build condominiums over the dead babies' bodies."
In this wasteland of layabouts and do-gooders, there's a tough white lady CEO (Taylor Schilling, whose performance suggests a softcore porn star or a Nordstrom mannequin) negotiating with a steely white dude CEO (Grant Bowler), who coincidentally makes blue steel under the hilarious name of Rearden, and demands people tell him how good his steel is. Meanwhile the planet is suffering from an Invasion of the Rich White CEO-Snatchers; the best and the brightest middle managers are being whisked away by a man in a raincoat who sounds like Rorschach. (For a film so obsessed with merit, it is markedly incompetent: In one representative scene, Schilling stands to berate a sniveling union boss, but her ferocity is somewhat undermined by her chic business shirt having ridden up, leaving her midriff exposed like she's going clubbing.) At stake in all these staring contests: high-speed trains, and the big government that wants to keep high-speed trains from happening. Because if there's one thing success-hating liberals have never proposed, it's high-speed trains.
Leaving aside the rather transparent hypocrisies here, Part 1 is incredibly boring because it feels most like a gathering of Young Republicans at a Milton Friedman summer camp—the overwhelming emotion (from the script and direction; the actors convey no emotions) is the verge-of-tears frustration of people with a desperate need to confirm to each other that they are the best at being smart and great, and everyone else is lazy and stupid. And if all the lazy and stupid people don't tell them how smart and great they are, they will go away. Well, if it's so important to you: You're amazing, and Rearden steel is the steeliest steel in the steelworks. Now will you please still go away? PG-13.
Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 opened Friday at Fox Tower and Bridgeport.
WWeek 2015