Z/Web

This is not the kind of film I usually like as I hate political films, but to my surprise I found the drama and multiple storyline approach intriguing and I ended up watching the whole thing. It’s about a huge political protest against the WTO (World Trade Organization) in 1999 that sparked riots and police brutality. I’d never even heard of the event (but I don’t pay much attention to such things).

I didn’t appreciate the film’s one-sidedness on the WTO (it clearly sides with the protesters with no voice on the other side), but I did like the way it tried to present multiple sides of the riots. We follow a cop with a pregnant wife, the mayor and the political pressure on him for the WTO summit to go well, several of the protestors, as well as people from third world countries involved with the WTO there to plead on their country’s behave for aid (and I liked that we were shown how the riots interfered with their agenda).

It was an interesting film, but other than a bit of brief background on a few of the protesters, we really don’t get much of an idea of what motivates them (and though presented sympathetically, they do seem a bit loony). There were a number of places I thought the drama could have been better handled, but the aspects of the rioting were well-handled and quite terrifying. (Having been near such rioting a couple of times in my life, I know what it feels like.) The all-start cast is excellent.

Ultimately the film is too preachy to move beyond its core audience of people who agree with the protestors, which is sad as it’s got some positive aspects. It’s not a great film but it’s worth seeing just for some of the key scenes, and I really liked that it got me thinking about the morality of responsibility. So much potential; I wish it had been handled more evenly as the message is important.

(An interesting aside: I watched this right after watching the season finale of Falling Skies, the summer TNT series about an alien invasion [yes, I’m way behind on my TV watching], and I found fascinating parallels. In that finale a key question was about responsibility: do we fight the aliens or sit back and hide and hope they’ll be merciful? The fight was compared to the American Revolution, where good men faced the same dilemma, and I found it intriguing that I was making comparisons to the protests in Seattle. If we don’t pay attention to what our government does or protest evil, perhaps we will lose the right to protest at all?)