Atlas Shrugged Part 1

I don't want to review Atlas Shrugged. I don't even want to think back on this crashing bore of a film. But, I saw it, and I must report my thoughts on it to you, the reader. And then I must never think of it again until December rolls around, and I start making my Worst Films of the Year list. Atlas Shrugged may eventually come to be known as a cure for insomnia, but it will never be known as entertainment.

The film, the first in a planned trilogy (hence the "Part 1" of the title), is based on the controversial book by Ayn Rand, one that has inspired debate for decades. I believe the only thing this adaptation will inspire is the desire to flee for the nearest exit. Only the most diehard of fans of Rand's work could stand to watch this stuffy, uninvolved, and altogether pointless film that consists mainly of C and D-list actors sitting around tables, and talking to each other endlessly about things that are neither interesting, or do anything to move the plot forward in any way. Oh, and just to add a little excitement, we also get shots of trains making their way through the countryside. Or sometimes even workers laying down railroad tracks! It repeats the same scenes and ideas over and over until we never want to see or hear people talk about trains ever again. When the movie actually decides to throw in a tepid and uninspired sex scene late in the film, we're almost grateful.

A movie of Atlas Shrugged has been in the works for a while, and once had names like Clint Eastwood attached to it. But now, we get this hastily thrown together, badly acted tripe that barely looks made-for-TV quality. It tells the story of an economic crisis in the year 2016, where the U.S. is pretty much in ruins due to government influence. Gas prices are astronomical, city streets are in shambles, and trains have replaced planes as the main method of travel. The film focuses on one particular railroad company - Taggart Transcontinental, which was once a mighty corporate empire, but has been run into the ground by its current head, James Taggart (Matthew Marsden). James' sister, Dagny (Taylor Schilling), isn't about to see the family name get trashed by her brother and those greedy government officials. So, she teams up with an industrialist named Henry Reardon (Grant Bowler), who thinks he may have a new kind of steel material to make railroad tracks with that would be cost efficient and practical.

All the while, the government keeps on getting in the way with smear campaigns and threats. Meanwhile, the great businessmen of the world are mysteriously disappearing, as they are all approached by a mysterious man who lurks in the shadows, and offers to take them away to a special place. This leads to the film's central question - "Who is John Galt"? We don't learn the answer to this question (at least not in this movie), but everybody keeps on asking it. When they're not talking about the mysterious Mr. Galt, they're usually sitting around office and dining room tables, reciting some of the most banal and lifeless dialogue I've ever heard in my years of going to the movies. The fact that no one really says their dialogue with any real passion makes it all the more lifeless of an experience.

Atlas Shrugged is not simply a bad movie, but a bad movie that is dead inside. It's one of the most aggressively boring movies I've ever seen. Nothing of interest happens in its entire running time, there's not a spark of life to be found within it, and the whole thing just feels like a cynical cash grab on the book's famous name, which it turns out, it is. Producer John Aglialoro rushed this film into production, as his rights to the book were about to expire. He slapped his cast and crew together, called it a film, and now audiences everywhere are paying the price. Why make a movie like this? Why have your actors say dialogue like, "Why these stupid altruistic urges"? Why spend so much time showing railroad tracks being put together? Most of all, why give nothing of interest to anyone but the most fevered fans of the original work?

But will fans even like it? I honestly can't say. The movie is so dead emotionally, I can't imagine anyone being able to sit through it. After the film's final fade out, we're promised a Part 2 is on the way. I say it would take a miracle for this movie to inspire a sequel, but stranger things have happened. Besides, the fans already know what happens next, and know who John Galt is. I, for one, couldn't care less, and won't be going out of my way to find out the answers anytime soon.

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