It sheds much needed light on a mostly forgotten event in our country's history.

November 06, 2008 read full article

What I think the movie failed to do was the thing it had to do most, which was explain what is the WTO and why in Stuart Townshend's opinion, is it bad.

November 06, 2008 read full article

If current events hold, Battle in Seattle could look like prophecy as well as history.

October 17, 2008 read full article

There is a monster in Battle in Seattle, but it never speaks and remains mysterious.

October 17, 2008 read full article

Actor-turned writer-director Stuart Townsend makes great use of the documentary footage of the '99 Seattle WTO riots. And he gets across his talking points about this shadowy outfit, too. It's a shame his script and all his actor friends get in the way.

October 16, 2008 read full article

It's easy to see why Townsend was attracted to this inherently dramatic situation, but the characters he's put on screen feel less like real people than like entities created to either make plot points or stand in for specific positions.

September 26, 2008 read full article

One strength is Barry Ackroyd's handheld-camera work, which deftly tracks the action but still captures the disorientation of those engulfed by the mayhem.

September 26, 2008 read full article

The chief culprits are Townsend's TV-movie characterizations and a very muddled message.

September 26, 2008 read full article

The result is not quite a documentary and not quite a drama, but interesting all the same.

September 25, 2008 read full article

It sounds like a bad TV movie, yet Stuart Townsend, the veteran actor-turned-director re-creates it all with stunning passion and skill in Battle in Seattle.

September 24, 2008 read full article

The characters in Battle in Seattle are often crudely drawn, and the able actors struggle with canned lines.

September 19, 2008 read full article

For all its speeches and scary graphics, Townsend's script fails to make it clear why we should care today.

September 19, 2008 read full article

Less notable is the soap-ish plot, which leans heavily on coincidence and melodrama.

September 19, 2008 read full article

It's like a class play by the Students for a Democratic Society.

September 19, 2008 read full article

But a drama is only as convincing as its characters. The people awkwardly forced together in Battle in Seattle are rhetorical mouthpieces tied to the sketchy plotlines of a so-so Hollywood ensemble movie.

September 19, 2008 read full article

... will leave you slightly better informed than two hours spent staring at a wall.

September 18, 2008 read full article

Townsend smothers any sense of global immediacy by covering the action with a frayed patchwork of melodramatic coincidences,

September 17, 2008 read full article

The drama gets heavy-handed at times, but the film is a triumph, thanks to a crack cast including Connie Nielson, stunning as a TV reporter who joins her subjects in protest.

September 15, 2008 read full article

While it makes no bones about where its sympathies lie, these fictional stories show a genuine fascination with the role politics plays on both sides of such confrontations and how things can spin out of control with no single person to blame.

September 14, 2007 read full article

Effectively mixing original broadcast and amateur vid footage (especially during scenes of crowd panic and police brutality) with interwoven fictive strands, Townsend acquits himself well, if not outstandingly, as both writing and directing newbie.

September 11, 2007 read full article