Review of The East (2013) by Alan W — 02 Nov 2013

It is rare to see an "espionage/thriller" that doesn't focus solely on politics, and The East does this exceptionally well. The movie is about Sarah Moss, a former FBI agent who works for a private intelligence firm to go undercover to infiltrate a group called The East. While the idea might seem too linear, The East decides to go in a different direction entirely. While the movie goes on, this thriller turns into a drama that specifically focuses on the human emotion of the situations, rather than the crimes and the price that comes with them.

The East has a couple of different identities, and the first one that comes to mind for me was Another Earth, another movie that features Brit Marling as both the co-writer and main actress. The East takes the humanistic/relationship quality of Another Earth and builds on the relationships in a less revealing, but much more powerful way. That is what makes The East very good. The writing isn't perfect by any means, but it recognizes the situation the story is put in by giving every character a chance to be looked at as the good guy.

The next identity would have to be something like a watered down version of The Debt. There are not many twists in The East but there are enough moments that have tension and pose risks that makes the viewer unsure with what will happen next. Towards the end, everything becomes more and more predictable but that doesn't hurt the quality of the movie at all.

That brings me to the best part of The East. The acting. The acting by the whole cast was done very well. Brit Marling is as good as ever and Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page are great in their respective roles. For me at least, the three of them were the driving force behind the emotions of the story. While each character had their own motivations, the three characters portrayed by Marling, Skarsgard, and Page, were the ones that really brought forth their own interpretations of the main purpose and having the different ideologies presented by the end allows the movie to not seem biased in one way or the other, and focuses on the viewer to make their own decisions on what is right and wrong. Definitely worth the rent.