Atlas Shrugged: Part I

I am someone who has read Ayn Rand's famous novel. With its myriad of characters and often times excessive preaching, it's not for everyone and that's too bad because there are some great lessons about self-reliance and perseverance found within its pages. But it's an overly long book which meant one of the interesting things would be to see just how they would cut down the story and still retain the book's fascinating characters. The bad news is that they didn't or maybe just couldn't. I don't think the problem is with the acting or direction. Instead, the issue is there is just too much story to relay even in a trilogy of movies. This story is much better suited for a mini-series. Heck, maybe even a Summer-long series. Unless you are familiar with the book, there is just no way you are going to get the motivations and intricacies of the plot or the characters. The movie itself looks good. There's just too much story to cover and too little time to do so.

I'm big fan of the book and of Ayn Rand's work and watched this movie. It was one of the worst movies I have ever seen and a waste of my time. Some movies are so bad, say Batman and Robin, that they are almost entertaining for being so bad. This is the worst kind of bad, bad and boring. The cinematography, set design, and costumes are actually kind of breath taking. A lot of care and love went into that aspect of the film. Some of the casting is good and those actors deliver the best acting. The adaptation of the source material is pretty good too, believable anyway. The writing, direction, most of the acting and casting however are awful. The look of the lead character Dagny Tagart is spot on but her acting is dull, lifeless and devoid of any personality. One could argue that is how she appears in the book but I would have to disagree. Dagny couldn't be bothered with nonsense but when something excited her she was like a child filed with wonder and excitement. None of this come out in the film which is probably a fault of the director. This film didn't bomb because of a conspiracy against free thinking or the Tea Party. This film was a critical and commercial failure because ironically brains and ability lost to hubris and arrogance.