Battle in Seattle

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Battle in Seattle
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Stuart Townsend
Produced by	Mary Aloe
Starring	André Benjamin Jennifer Carpenter Woody Harrelson Martin Henderson Ray Liotta Connie Nielsen Michelle Rodriguez Channing Tatum Charlize Theron
Music by	Massive Attack
Cinematography	Barry Ackroyd
Distributed by	Redwood Palms Pictures
Release date(s)	Toronto Film Festival September 8, 2007 United States limited September 19, 2008 Canada October 17, 2008[1]
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United States Canada Germany
Language	English
Budget	US$8 million
Gross revenue	$886,461[2]

Battle in Seattle is a 2007 film and the directorial debut of actor Stuart Townsend. It is based on the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity. The film premiered on May 22, 2008 at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Filming locations 4 Reception 5 See also 6 Further reading 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Plot

The film depicts the historic protest in 1999, as thousands of activists arrive in Seattle, Washington in masses to protest the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999. The World Trade Organization is considered by the protesters as the prime cause for world wide hunger, disease and mass death. The movie takes an in-depth look at several fictional characters during those five days in 1999 as demonstrators protested the meeting of the WTO in Seattle's streets. The movie portrays conflicts between the peaceful protesters and a minority committing property destruction whose actions were widely covered by the media. Although the protest began peacefully with a goal of stopping the WTO talks, through police aggression and violent undercover actions it escalated into a full-scale riot and eventually, a State of Emergency that pitted protesters against the Seattle Police Department and the National Guard.

[edit] Cast

Though the film is based on actual events, the characters are fictional.

• Martin Henderson as Jay
• Michelle Rodriguez as Lou
• Charlize Theron as Ella
• Woody Harrelson as Dale
• André Benjamin as Django
• Connie Nielsen as Jean
• Ray Liotta as Mayor Jim Tobin (loosely based on real-life Seattle Mayor Paul Schell)
• Channing Tatum as Johnson
• Jennifer Carpenter as Sam
• Ivana Miličević as Carla
• Joshua Jackson as Randall

[edit] Filming locations

• Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  • University of British Columbia, Point Grey Campus
  • Granville Square
  • Corner of Hastings and Hornby
  • Corner of Hastings and Howe Leone and L2
  • Foot of Vancouver Public Library
  • Fraser Street, between 41st and 49th Avenues
• Seattle, Washington

[edit] Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics, earning a 52% positive rating from numerous reviews on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes As of December 2008^[update]. The critical consensus was that the film, though "well-intentioned and passionate", had stronger political content than characters.^[3] New York Magazine called the film "a triumph",^[4] while Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and described it as "not quite a documentary and not quite a drama, but interesting all the same" and compared it to past political films like Medium Cool.^[5] According to EW.com, the film "sounds like a bad TV movie: a drama based on the protests that halted the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Yet Stuart Townsend re-creates it all with stunning passion and skill in 'Battle in Seattle'"^[6] Whereas, a review on Anarkismo.net stated, "The diversity of thought and strategy within anarchism is ignored, and in its place is a one-dimensional, sensational caricature of anarchist politics, despite being slightly more educated then [sic] the usual media portrayal."^[7]

The film also received positive reviews from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.^[8][9]

Despite director Stuart Townsend's stated intention of portraying the events of protest accurately, the film was criticized by anarchist collective CrimethInc. for what they saw as its sensationalistic portrayal of events.^[10] In a pamphlet titled "And What About Tomorrow?", the collective allege that the protests were characterized in the film as an isolated spontaneous uprising in which a "small fringe group" of black bloc anarchists "stole the show", whereas CrimethInc. contend that "anarchists were involved in all different aspects of the protests" including nonviolent organization and Food Not Bombs, and credit the adoption of anarchist direct action tactics with the success of the uprising.^[10] A review published by Anarkismo praised the film as "clearly well-researched", citing the pacing and general narrative as quite accurate, but criticized the presentation of anarchist politics as one-dimensional and a caricature.^[11]

[edit] See also

• List of American films of 2007
• 30 Frames a Second: The WTO in Seattle 2000, a photojournalist's first person documentary film shot during the protests and released in 2000
• Breaking the Spell, an anarchist documentary account of the protests released by CrimethInc.
• Farmers' suicides in India - a statistic cited at the end of the picture

[edit] Further reading

• Solnit, David; Rebecca Solnit (2008). The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle. Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 1904859631. OCLC 182529206. 

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Who Controls the World?
• Battle in Seattle at MySpace
• Battle in Seattle at Box Office Mojo
• Battle in Seattle at the Internet Movie Database
• Battle in Seattle at Allmovie
• Battle in Seattle at Rotten Tomatoes