Battle in Seattle 2007

Ben Mankiewicz, At the Movies: 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. Read more

Colin Covert, Chicago Tribune: ... will leave you slightly better informed than two hours spent staring at a wall. Read more

Sara Cardace, New York Magazine/Vulture: 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. Read more

Joshua Katzman, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: It's the next best thing to being there, in that it's likely to make shuddering viewers intensely glad that they weren't. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The chief culprits are Townsend's TV-movie characterizations and a very muddled message. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: 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. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: 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. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: There is a monster in Battle in Seattle, but it never speaks and remains mysterious. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Most inspiring in its throwaway moments, the flick mistakenly thinks we give a damn about an irritating romance when it would be better served by facts, outrage, and complexity. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: For all its speeches and scary graphics, Townsend's script fails to make it clear why we should care today. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: It's like a class play by the Students for a Democratic Society. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Less notable is the soap-ish plot, which leans heavily on coincidence and melodrama. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: 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. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The result is not quite a documentary and not quite a drama, but interesting all the same. Read more

Reyhan Harmanci, San Francisco Chronicle: The characters in Battle in Seattle are often crudely drawn, and the able actors struggle with canned lines. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: If current events hold, Battle in Seattle could look like prophecy as well as history. Read more

Hank Sartin, Time Out: Read more

Mark Holcomb, Time Out: Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: 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. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Townsend smothers any sense of global immediacy by covering the action with a frayed patchwork of melodramatic coincidences, Read more