Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011)

Let me begin this review by saying that I have never read Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957 to negative reviews. The fact that it was completely published to chagrin makes me wonder if in twenty years Atlas Shrugged: Part I, the adaptation of the first third or so of the novel, will be embraced with open arms as the novel is today, because for the time being, this movie is terrible. It truly is terrible. I am thankful that this movie is only a small limited release, even though more dedicated fans of the book will sadly track it down, because not a lot of people will find this movie. Starring Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart, this film follows her struggle with the economy and the fact that her railway, Taggart Transcontinental, is about to go under. So through a bunch of boring transactions, they end up creating the John Galt line to try and fix the train economy, because of the question constantly said to Dagny, “Who is John Galt?”, a question which I looked up the answer to on Wikipedia since the negative reaction to the film has halted production on parts two and three, currently forever. This movie isn’t offensive or just so blatantly terrible, it’s just easily the most boring movie this year. You see people in meetings talking with each other, it’s not that I don’t care about architecture and trains (which I don’t), it’s just that it’s filmed in such an uneventful way that I wanted to strangle myself. It almost feels like the exact opposite of a good movie, a movie with interesting scenes. It seems like this is a compilation of every single thing that didn’t happen in that movie. Because you can do a meeting film wonderfully. You can make a movie about something I don’t care about and make it indefinitely intresting. Heck, look at Margin Call. It’s easily in my top 20 films this year, and it’s about people arguing over stock. I don’t care about stock, but it’s made so interestingly that I still love it. I don’t love this film. It feels like the downside mixture of a documentary you see in an architecture class or a TV pilot that NBC wasn’t even good enough to produce. And honestly-did you see The Cape? The question of this film is “Who is John Galt?” Who cares?
1.5/10