Like many films that try to mix entertainment with political and social messages, Stuart Townsend’s Battle in Seattle has its priorities backwards. In dramatizing the 1999 World Trade Organization protests, Townsend puts a commendable amount of effort into representing every viewpoint — the protestors, the riot police who confronted them, the government of Seattle, even disenfranchised members of the WTO — but in doing so, he forgets to tell a story.
In its opening minutes, Battle presents itself like a documentary, and that may have been a better approach. A slick bit of narration explains the role of the WTO in our modern world, as well as providing some context for the Seattle protests, which were designed to stop the talks and create awareness of what many view as an obscenely powerful, largely unaccountable organization.
Things go quickly downhill from there. The movie jumps to a scene of activists André Benjamin, Martin Henderson and Michelle Rodriguez hanging an anti-WTO sign from a construction crane. Henderson’s is the most developed of the three characters, a born leader who’s driven to take on the corporate giants by the death of his brother. Rodriguez is the tough, angry activist who isn’t sure they’re doing enough, and Benjamin, well, he’s just a happy dude who really likes turtles. Sadly, they’re the most fully developed characters in the movie. Woody Harrelson as a riot cop, Charlize Theron as his pregnant wife, Ray Liotta as the mayor — each character is crafted not to resonate as a person, but to reflect a particular perspective.
Townsend mixes archival footage of conflicts between police and protestors in with his re-creations, and it’s here that you realize what the film could have been. The simple facts that surround the events in Seattle — the way non-violent protestors shut down the city but had their message overtaken by a handful of vandals, the way police responded with tear gas and mass arrests of people who were simply exercising their basic rights — would make for a riveting and important documentary. The footage that already exists is clearly provocative, and there are dozens, maybe hundreds of real-life stories that would be as exciting as any fiction. And likely far more interesting than this particular fiction.
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