From the Washington Post review of the movie "Battle in Seattle":
Townsend even opens the film with a narrator's summary of the issues involved (as the protesters see them), and it's an ingenious gambit: It relieves him of the expository task of explaining what the WTO is, or why some people would hate it. It's all laid out. Convincingly. Earnestly. And with no pretense of objectivity. Which is okay, because "Battle in Seattle" is agitprop and unashamedly so.
I'd be curious to see a review from someone who knows a bit about the WTO. Does the view of the WTO presented in the movie even come close to reality? (I don't know if I'll get out to see the movie myself -- when I do go to the movies, it's usually for something my 5 year old would like).
ADDED:
From the Chicago Tribune:
I'm no expert on trade guidelines, but the deck is stacked against the WTO so heavily that, in dramatic terms, they're the underdogs. The activists are uniformly young, attractive and adventurous—the film opens with an exciting sequence of protesters hooking a protest banner to a construction crane that makes protest look like a kick-ass extreme sport. Their adversaries are a phalanx of anonymous, frowning wrinklies in suits.
...
The film's ambitions exceed Townsend's grasp. After the tear gas clears, Benjamin's character sums up what the conflict accomplished. "Now people know what the WTO is," he says. After a moment's consideration, he says, "No they don't. But they know the WTO is bad." The same could be said for the movie, which will leave you slightly better informed than two hours spent staring at a wall.
