Review of Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) by Leo S — 10 Sep 2012

This movie shines on how well Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler had played the leading roles of Dagny and Rearden (although it could be argued that Dagny could be more daggered), but rains on how badly the screenwriter (or is it the director?) had squandered the material from Ayn Rand's novel.

It was a low-budget movie (there is a reason you've never heard of Schilling and Bowler before), but they wanted the audience to believe it's a 100 million+ production by spending a fortune on the glamorous set of Rearden's anniversary party or on the sweeping view of a train running through the Rocky Mountains (digital animated?). It's as pretentious as a one- man business wants his clients to think he's Fortune 500 by renting a mail box in a Rockefeller Center and having his girlfriend answer the calls like an executive assistant.

The movie could be much more successful, even with such low budget, if the director was as confident as Henry Rearden portrayed in the movie. Then he would stick to what made the novel so successful, and let the actors to act on two sharply divided ideas (or you can it philosophy), not tamely but dashingly.

Let the characters talk, argue, fight, clash in every single scene from start to end, and in a much faster pace. That is, focus on the conflicts between the camp of Dagny and Rearden and the camp of James and his Washington friends.

Look at how Aaron Sorkin did in his movies and TV dramas. Maybe the producer should have spent half of the budget hiring Sorkin (he could reject the offer citing on the philosophical difference, though) to write the script, and Atlas would have nodded.