Battle In Seattle (2008) Movie Review

Battle in Seattle is a fictionalized account of the 1999 protests against the meeting of the World Trade Organization, which led to five days of confusion and violence in the streets of Seattle, Washington. Told sincerely by actor Stuart Townsend, who wrote and directed the film, Battle in Seattle means well, but gets muddled at times, especially with a pushed romantic angle.

Townsend opens the film by quickly rendering through explanations of what the WTO does and stands for, in assuming that not every person knows. The explanation includes that the WTO is harmful to Third World countries, and drives workers away from jobs. The audience first meets Jay (Martin Henderson), who is the leader of the protesters. His group also includes his anarchy driven love interest Lou (Michelle Rodriguez), a free-spirit named Django (Andre Benjamin), and a young attorney named Sam (Jennifer Carpenter). Jay and the others plan for a non-violent and peaceful protest on the streets of Seattle against the WTO. The mayor of Seattle, Jim Tobin (Ray Liotta), encourages the protest as he admits he protested the war in Vietnam. However, once the protest’s tactics lead to the blocking of intersections and entrances to where the members involved in the meeting cannot get to their destination, Tobin becomes concerned. Next, a few exemptions to Jay’s plan decide to make the protest violent, much against his original plan. Confusion then sets in and Tobin has to unleash the police with gas and spray for crowd control, which leads to more chaos and violence. Also included in the dangerous area of downtown are a cop named Dale (Woody Harrelson), whose wife Ella (Charlize Theron) is pregnant and works downtown, and a news reporter named Jean (Connie Nielsen), who becomes sympathetic.

There is an ample amount passion behind Townsend’s work with this film. The camerawork is steady and Townsend does a nice job of blending in actual footage of the protest in with his fictional account. He also does side with one side; he shows all involved as human beings, even those that don’t make the best of decisions. The problems with the film come from his script, not with the content, but with some of the choices of the characters. A romantic angle with Jay and Lou feels out of place or unnecessary for what the film is attempting to say. It may have been Townsend’s attempt to add more depth to these characters, but it makes them more overstuffed than well-rounded. Some choices in the third act of the film also stumble, which cannot be divulge due to being a spoiler for those that have yet to see the film. Townsend shows his has skills as a filmmaker, look for him to grow more and more with each of his future projects.

Townsend does conjure a solid ensemble cast for the film. His real-life love Charlize Theron is heartbreaking as a pregnant bystander, and Woody Harrelson delivers the film’s best performance as her calm-the raged cop husband. Ray Liotta shines as the stressed mayor of Seattle Tobin and Andre Benjamin brings much need humor to the film as the Django. As the lead, Martin Henderson does not have the depth to hold the audience’s total attention as the protest organizer Jay, but it is one of his better performances.

Battle in Seattle shows a glimpse of what happened in 1999 in the streets of Seattle that was intended to be a non-violent protest that turned into chaos for five days. This is something that not many people know about, so this story should be told, and Townsend tells it well. However, certain un-necessities hurt the film and bring it down to being merely watchable rather than being a film that most should see.