Screeching to the choir

Is there anything more excruciating than being forced to watch earnest political propaganda from one's own side? Battle in Seattle attempts to recount the riots and police violence that erupted in Seattle, Washington, in November, 1999, when that city was playing host to the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Conference. It fails.

I truly regret having missed the actual historic moment, as whatever I knew about it is now forever colored by this inadequate film. Originally, I was to have gone to Seattle with friends from the Portland, Oregon, chapter of the ILWU, the longshore and warehouse union, to lend my voice against unbridled capitalism. At the last minute, I got stuck in Portland while my friends went north to take to the streets. I had breakfast the next morning with one of them, who gave me his account of what happened.

Seattle was not prepared for what hit it. While the city figured on a protest against the WTO of a few thousand people, 40,000 actually showed up. There were protests within protests (the unions had a different marching route than other protesters, though there was overlapping), effectively shutting down the city.

Though the mayor, Paul Schell, did everything humanly possible to allow both the WTO and its critics to share the same space, a faction of "anarchists" ignorant of the efficacy of peaceful protest decided to shatter a few Starbucks windows. From that spark, the police, who had already been unleashed in some areas of downtown, became something other than peacekeepers themselves, and so serious rioting began.

In director Stuart Townsend's first film, Battle in Seattle, you get much of this back story, delivered with all the grace and gravity of an '80s ABC movie of the week. But straining to the point of developing hernias, Townsend creates far more drama than initially existed.

One gets the impression that the entire city was under siege. The truth of the matter is that the majority of the 40,000 protesters, primarily the union marchers, didn't even know riots were taking place. It wasn't until that evening, after the greater part of protesters had left Seattle, when things really exploded, especially in the historically gay neighborhood of Capital Hill. When I met my union friend for breakfast the next day, I knew more about the riots the night before than he did.

Structurally, Townsend's cinematic version of events is somewhere between Paul Greengrass' superb United 93 and an Irwin Allen potboiler like The Swarm. Like Greengrass (and Townsend actually used the same cameraman who shot United 93), Townsend hoped to recreate a historic episode by constructing a fictional idea of events within the existing, contemporary reportage. Unfortunately, whereas Greengrass always strove for objectivity and verity, Townsend is content with didacticism and cliché.

Greengrass' all-too-human characters are gone, replaced by Townsend's polemical mannequins. We are introduced to one-dimensional "hippies," "cops" and "suits" the way Allen presents his cardboard players before the killer bees arrive to sting them into shouting and running for their lives. There's tree-hugger Jay (Martin Henderson) who makes a love connection with tough protest girl Lou (Michelle Rodriguez). Then there's good cop Dale (Woody Harrelson) discovered holding the hand of his pregnant wife, Ella (Charlize Theron), as she gets the ultrasound for their baby (pregnant woman plus riots can only equal …).

Behind the scenes, Mayor Schell (strangely rechristened "Jim Tobin" and played somnambulistically by Ray Liotta) tries to satisfy both sides, finally succeeding in mucking up the whole affair.

What's been drafted to serve as dialogue is mostly boilerplate exchanges, mouthed with all the power and conviction of a 20-year-old bumper sticker, and inadvertently lending credence to the right's critique that the left is only capable of thinking in slogans. True here.

Hoping to add a dash of veracity to these stultifying proceedings, Townsend uses existing news footage of the actual WTO protests to enliven his narrative. These are often crudely grafted on, particularly in one segment where we first see an actual shot of Schell addressing protest organizers from a theater stage. The historic footage was shot from behind Schell, who is seen standing center stage facing the organizers. But, in Townsend's following front shot of Schell's alter ego, Mayor Tobin, Liotta is pressed against a backdrop sign that doesn't exist in the first. The film's low budget obviously precluded either a continuity person or a sighted editor.

When this cheap programmer finally ends, as it must, with our young, earnest protesters having won the first battle against globalization, the credits become a public service announcement for the continuing struggles ahead.

Still, odd moments in the historic footage present glimpses of the joyous protest most of the marchers experienced. The highlight, my friend told me over breakfast, was approaching the Space Needle and suddenly hearing Jimi Hendrix's version of the "Star-Spangled Banner" blaring from an apartment house window. Come the revolution, I hope for more Hendrix and less agitprop kitsch like Townsend's film.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com