“The Way, Way Back”
Directed by Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Starring Liam James, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Robb Corddry, Amanda Peet, Maya Rudolph, Allison Janney, River Alexander and AnnaSophia Robb
Comedy, Drama
103 Mins
PG-13

While The Way, Way Back has a firm handle on its supporting cast, it leaves the plot to the dogs. It’s that strange breed of hybrid – commonly known as a dramedy – that refuses to settle with just being funny and in reaching for something more, comes up short. In a way, the experience is akin to hanging out at your parents’ beach house: you have to wait in suspended restiveness until the vacation is finished, pretending to enjoy yourself the whole time. At least the weird, beach-deserted manboy trying to be friends with you is actually funny here. 


The film opens up on the back of Steve Carell‘s head as he chastises teenage Duncan. He breaks the rule that is holiest of holies and calls blossoming teen Duncan ugly. Not physically ugly so much as emotionally ugly. Oh and he throws in that he doesn’t respect him either. All the while, Duncan’s mom sleeps in the front seat oblivious. Within these few introductory moments, we’ve established an uncomfortable familial triangle funk and know that we’re all in for a long summer vacation at the beach.

The screenwriting duo of The Descendants, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, take their inaugural directors chairs here and show promise in their ability to harness the brighter elements in the film but allow those without as much luster to get kicked around in the dirt. The emotional oomph precedes itself and the all-too-familiar sense of teenage angst that permeates the film is kind of like having a teenager around – that is, it’s annoying. Not in an egregiously annoying manner so much as a “that kid is having so little fun that he’s sucking the air out of the room” annoying. The uncomfortable in-laws annoying.

We remember that there’s a reason we all wanted to escape the trials and tribulations of teenagedom as we watch the gloom and doom of that self-defeating mindset pervade the mind of our protagonist Duncan. Caught between being rebellious and putting in the minimal amount of effort to please your parents because you still have to live with them for another four years (which seems like eternity), it simply is not a pleasant time. Unfortunately, neither is watching one of these floundering teens.

When you let an animal thrash, it spoils the meat. Even in muted misery, your guests are in store for some sour filling. As so much of the film tries to get us into the head of a pressure-cooking teen boiling over with early-life angst, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth.

Slashing through the acrid flavor is an off-the-wall Sam Rockwell let loose to do what he does best: rant and ramble. Continuing his streak of winning performances, Rockwell gets to play with some emotional gravity here but is really only allowed to scratch the surface. His character bobs in a pool of quick comedy and in it, thrives. Without a doubt, Rockwell is the highlight of the film.

In stark contrast to Rockwell’s easy-breezy-beautiful sensibilities, Liam James of The Killing crumbles under the bulk of the film and his moody, mopey, reluctant character is more pitiable than relatable. We understand his plight and don’t envy his position but he’s helplessly awkward without being helplessly cute. James shows promise but it’s not yet realized.

Towering over him is Carrell whose overbearing potentially-to-be-stepdad is as repugnant as he is potent. He doesn’t have one iota of humanity and surely offers an easy to hate character, depth be damned. Toni Collette is similarly thin on character but we suffer alongside her as the pieces making up her makeshift family collide and drift apart, collide and drift apart.

In a film about relationships, many here are shallow and unbelievable. Collette and Carrell have no chemistry, I’m not buying that Rockwell is into the strict, fugly succubus that is Maya Rudolph and there’s no one on Earth that could convince me that Rob Corddry could land Amanda Peet. But through all the super-glued relationships, the comedy continues to shine. Allison Janney, the only party without a counterpart, is perfect as the drunken-overbearing neighbor and brings us right back to the days of dreading the uncomfortable crazy lady next door. Between Janney and Rockwell, there’s enough solid comedic lunacy to make up for the otherwise failed dramatic gravitas.

The Way, Way Back is a victory but a small and silent one, the kind only a hermit crab or a loner teen could celebrate. Settling to skim on the water’s surface rather than dive into it, Faxon and Rash’s film fails to be brave. Trying to harness love for Little Miss Sunshine thematically and even in the casting, Faxon and Rash have made a festival film that’s more derivative than standalone. The story is a sapling, waiting to flourish into something more. Something more never comes and in the end, we’re no richer having seen it nor are we any worse for the wear.

46 Days and 447 Films

From Thursday, April 25 (with an official start date of May 16) to Sunday, June 9, the Seattle International Film Festival has screened 447 films, 31 of which I had a chance to watch. From opening with Joss Whedon’s Shakespearean piece Much Ado About Nothing, which I called “a one-and-done modernized adaptation proud to bear its fuzzy flaws,” to Sofia Coppola’s teens-on-a-tear, The Bling Ring, this festival had diversity and volume on its side more than anything.

Bending between the genres of drama and horror, sci-fi and coming-of-age, thrillers to a wealth of documentaries, hearing stories pulled from France, England, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, America, Paraguay and Denmark from new filmmakers and seasoned veterans alike, we walked the world within these films.

From the emotional powerhouse that is What Maisie Knew to the lame-duck that was Last I Heard, these films embodied the meaning of cinema: the good, the bad and the ugly. The purely effervescent delights of Populaire and Frances Ha rocketed above the stale-blooded, bottom-of-the-barrel horror found in V/H/S 2 and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. In the experimental and proudly indie department, Drinking Buddies stood head and shoulders above David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche and even A Hijacking was more muted than it ought to have been.

Coming of age in The Spectacular Now was sweeter than The Kings of Summer and The Way, Way Back but none quite challenged our presumptions as much as the under-dogging Blackbird. Things got truly nuts behind the closed doors of Evangelical churches in Eden and intrigue brewed in the streets of Cambodia in Wish You Were Here as Cockneys Vs Zombies tried to capitalize on the zombie craze to varying success. Andrew Mudge backpedaled into a simpler time with The Forgotten Kingdom and 7 Boxes ganged us up with a young delivery boy hauling unknown contents around a bustling city overrun with corruption. While Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was too busy looking important to actually be important, The East managed to sneak a viable message into a mainstream film.

In Twenty Feet From Stardom, we learned the stories of the talent who’s names we don’t know while we were exposed to the shifty nature of Julian Assange and lead to question his politics in We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. The Crash Reel presented the devastating and inspiring story of snowboarding Olympic hopeful Kevin Pearce and Blackfish took a similarly sensitive approach even though its subject was a killer whale named Tilikum.  

Evergreen: The Road to Legalization in Washington took us on a well researched and unbiased journey through the debate on weed legalization while Tom Berninger abrasively pulled back the curtain on brotherhood and The National in Mistaken for Strangers. Dead Meat Walking took a shortcut to making a documentary on zombie walks and came up short while Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton and Her Aim is True both took aim at the influence of great underground artists and their impact on their beloved craft. Each was told with loving dedication even though the subjects aren’t quite mainstream enough to attract a far reaching audience.

I got a chance to sit down with James Ponsoldt and talk about the through-line of alcoholism in his films and the Pans Labyrinth-esque sci-fi flick he’s working on and he and Tom Berninger both talked about the strange and trailblazing state of our generation. Tom and I also debated heavy metal vs. indie music and he spilled his aspirations to make a Johnny Appleseed film in the traditional of Tarantino historical revisionism. Eric Slade, Stephen Silha and I talked queer politics and “following your weird” while Kieran Darcy-Smith and Felicity Price gave me the low down on making a film on the cheap and the friendship with Joel Edgerton that made Wish You Were Here possible on such a large scale. Karen Whitehead shared her love for rock’n’roll music and the art of the photograph as Matthias Hoene established his own affection for the good old fashion horror genre and just why people are so fascinated with the supernatural. Clark Gregg gave an update on the Marvel movie universe and Andrew Mudge talked about his affinity for modern day Africa and the endless wealth of stories of journey and perseverance that sit untapped there.

When all was said and done at SIFF, Harmony Lessons, Our Nixon and the David Sedaris-based C.O.G. receive competition awardswhile Fanie Fourie’s Lobola and Twenty Feet from Stardom took home the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards. James Cromwell of Still Mine and Samantha Morton from Decoding Annie Parker split up a pair of Golden Space Needle Acting Awards and The Spectacular Now won the Futurewave competition for “embodying the teenage struggle in a realistic manner.”

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“Wish You Were Here”
Directed by Kieran Darcy-Smith
Starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price, Teresa Palmer, Antony Starr
Drama, Mystery
89 Mins
R

Cautionary tale and psychological thriller, Wish You Were Here is the worst of vacation nightmares realized. Veering around chronological storytelling, director Kieran Darcy-Smith twists an introspective journey into a taut thriller. With silence that feels as weighty as dialogue, Darcy-Smith stretches the alluring reveal on a little long but, when all is said and done, has left his mark and made a potent statement about the destructive nature of guilt.

When Jeremy goes missing after a drug-fueled night of partying, his girlfriend and her sister and husband are forced to continue their lives in his absence all the while trying to piece together his whereabouts and what exactly happened that night. The shenanigans overlap with the general theme of The Hangover insofar as there’s a lost friend and our characters are trying to compile some semblance of an otherwise drugged up night but the similarities end there, as the sorrowful drama that follows is no laughing matter.

Back home in Australia, Dave and Alice Flannery reconcile this shocking jolt of an event with their everyday lives. The notion of impermanence seeps into their mind like poison. As Alice stirs, Dave tries to forget. But his general unease and unwillingness to engage with the topic is revealing. Meanwhile, Alice is almost too oblivious to Dave’s discernible withdrawal into himself. Sugarcoating the mire may be a reactionary response to this trying time but without digging into the subtext, her aptitude for empathetic cues are questionable. Even when Alice isn’t on the same page as us, we know there’s something that Dave’s not letting on.

As Dave, Joel Edgerton wrestles with demons and, again, mixes it up. Even whilst jostling between a lineup of tough guys, Edgerton brings something unique to each of his characters and Dave is an imploding washboard that is miles different from his mob of manly roles. Bottled, carbonated and shook up, Edgerton’s Dave wrestles with the destructiveness of guilt and loses offering a performance that is at once restrained and explosive, adding fuel to the fire rocketing him to stardom.

Star and screenwriter, Felicity Price plays Alice as a wife and mother that’s caring, deluded and shabby-around-the-edges. Put through the ringer by her husband, Alice is a reactionary character, trying her best to adapt and shift with the new bits of information illuminating around her. Her hopeful optimism is the epitome of cognizance gone awry. Fooling yourself is a tricky game and one that Price navigates with careful footing. Her consternation with what unfolds is equally well plodded.

A jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing, Wish You Were Here unpacks its story like a jack-in-the-box strapped into boxing gloves. Slicing the real-time flow with quick backflips into time spent in Cambodia, we learn a new important piece of the puzzle every so often but never enough to anticipate the ultimate payoff. In true prizefighter fashion, Darcy-Smith saves the big, unexpected hook for last.

With some of the story beats coming right from the thriller playbook, there are moments where you hope for more bold originality on the screenwriters part but they still accomplish what they set out to: to entertain. Yes, there are bits that don’t quite hold up once we know the whole scope but the  emotional schema alleviates any lingering pressure from story impracticalities.

Capitalizing on our irrational fear of the unknown, Darcy-Smith Murphy Lawschools us into submission and throws that fear in our face with a final act that leaves us lack-jawed and stunned into silence. Entropy grows in the obscurity of guilt and the resulting smash-and-crash relations are a slow-growing inevitability.

Within the hustle of Cambodian life, the picture feels authentic and captures essences of culture and lifestyle that only the student of a culture can kindle. This is no work of a passerby; it is the story of a participant. The live free and die-hard nature of this place is alluring and minatory. A two-sided coin where danger lurks in the shadows on the outskirts of paradise, heaven and hell trade shifts with the coming and going of the sun. Leaping between continents and social constructs, Darcy-Smith juxtaposes the lifestyles of the Cambodian and Australian but passes no active judgment nor does he prescribe a formula for happiness or escaping dread.

Fleet-footed character exploration be damned, this creeping house of cards is parasitically engrossing. From Dave’s shell-shocked volatility to Alice’s buckling under, the characters are richer than the bulk of the script. Bleak and soul-searching, Darcy-Smith and Co. have created a film that pulls loose the rock on post-traumatic-stress and pokes around at the ants scurrying inside.

B-

“V/H/S 2”
Directed by Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sánchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard
Starring Kelsy Abbott, Devon Brookshire, Samantha Gracie, Hannah Hughes, Kevin Hunt, Lawrence Michael Levine, Carly Robell, Mindy Robinson, Adam Wingard and John T. Woods
Horror
96 Mins
R

V/H/S 2 is completely tone deaf to any semblance of mood that it tries to summon. Waffling between a lo-fi ghost story, perverse Zombie campiness, genuinely eerie cult atmospherics, old-school creature puppetry, and shockingly lame Alien clichés, the five portions that make up this film couldn’t be more disparate and at odds with each other. Even without the complete overuse of crackling audio and tired finicky video errors, it’s clear that this franchise cannot capture the almost realistic nature of the first film and instead settles with being a loose grab-bag of predictable horror staples.

In order to flesh out what exactly made V/H/S 2 such a failure on the whole, it’s important to understand the pieces. At first, the narrative structure holding the whole thing together seems more promising than the destructive-kids-on-a-tear that was the structural glue for the first one. It becomes obvious rather quickly though that just as little thought was put into this overarching story as were put into the segments that make up the majority of the film’s run-time.

The first segment opens on a guy who, after some unexplained accident, has had his eye replaced by a cyber-eye at the behest of an obviously screwy doctor/scientist. As part of the experiment, this robotic eye records everything that the host sees and thus, the filmmakers have set up the framework for the whole VHS slant. Even in the inklings of these establishing moments, the acting is so wooden and grade school that you’re almost jolted right out of the thing.

Only 10 minutes into the film and you’re already second-guessing its value… then come the ghosts whose makeup jobs look more like your parents on Halloween than anything resembling a professional effort. Sure, it’s spooky, it’s got some degree of mystery as to how they filmed some of the shots and certainly milks its fair share of jump-scares but it’s not really that much more impressive than something you’d find on YouTube and it features the acting ability of your local middle school play. Next.

From the second this sophomore short begins, it’s evident that we have another dud. Some dude is strapping a GoPro camera to his helmet to record his super-dope, ultra-hardcore mountain biking ride when his girlfriend calls and gives some speech about how he should be riding her and not his bike. Sigh. I understand that you’re not going to get top notch writers or even agented performers for the level of work but it really just seems like Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez, the filmmakers responsible for this dud, just scooped up their own friends or girlfriends for some of these roles. The acting is that bad.

 *SPOILER ALERT* As the chaos escalates, our POV gains sentience, grabs a shotgun and blasts his own head off. Considering that this is only a short, Hale and Sanchez may think they have escaped answering for this blaring WTF but it’s what’s left lingering afterwards. Horror audiences are asked more than most to just go with the flow and accept things for what they are but that’s still no excuse from this flagrantly sloppy screenwriting. *END SPOILER*

After these first two complete failures, the third short (which is considerably longer than the first two) arrives and saves the day. It doesn’t waste time establishing the POV and discards the shoddy acting while offering an actually interesting premise that hasn’t been done a million times before. We’re in some South East Asian country to check in with a scandalous cult organization and it’s pretty clear off the bat that the crew of documentary filmmakers –  whose eyes we are seeing through – are in store for some serious trouble.

Gareth Evans makes this work as well as it does because he plays with both reality and fantasy. Even though the aspects that were all grounded in reality work better than those that were not, this fantasy mash-up is certainly more entertaining than the run-of-the-mill horror flick. While this portion of the film may not quite be transcendent horror, it’s a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant and stinky feature.

The final segment is hardly worth mentioning because it could be the weakest of the bunch. After establishing a pretty solid setting of tweens vs. teens and the escalating pranks taking place at their beachside mansion, director Jason Eisener abandons any sense of propriety and sulks backwards into the lamest alien feature this side of the 21st century. The lack of imagination and scares are almost laughable and invoke a sense that this is all just a facade to be pulled away to reveal the real scares. It’s not. It’s just that bad.

If you have five people each pour a different ingredient into a proton collider and turned it on full blast, you still couldn’t expect something as disparate and self-defeating as this sour hodgepodge.  The standards for these short scares seem so low that I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a three-week window to make the executive decision on what was going to pass. Admittedly, there was one of the five total flicks that really worked for me but otherwise this is four-fifths of a terrible movie. With four films begging for that easy F and the third portion being a pretty solid B, the resulting GPA does not work in the film’s favor. If you’re up for turning off your mind and seeing the same old thing all over again in a completely unoriginal manner, you’re sure to get a few chuckles from the experience but otherwise, go watch Evil Dead again.

“Much Ado About Nothing”
Directed by Joss Whedon
Starring Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz, Sean Maher, Spencer Treat Clark, Riki Lindhome, Ashley Johnson
Comedy/Drama/Romance
107 Mins 
PG-13

Every time any sane person starts watching a Shakespeare adaptation, there’s that initial shock of the compacted and complex language – a bucket of cold water that reminds you that you can’t just sit back and coast – and the same is the case with Joss Whedon‘s Much Ado About Nothing.

Rather than your casual lethargic movie-going experience, you are forced to follow along as closely as possible if you want to gleam all the comic zingers from the work of the great Bard. However sink-or-swim Shakespeare’s diction may be, Whedon aims to make the experience as user-friendly as possible and charges through the weighty task of adapting such a prolific poet with a bubbly sense of life and purpose. It’s in this love of craft on all fronts that makes this modern envisioning work as well as it does.

All the performers’ love for Shakespeare and his hefty diction is clearly evident as Whedon and company tap into the timeless spirit of the mystery of love. They seem to capture a fleeting grasp of it. The question that remains when the lights go up is whether it’s just a good Shakespeare movie or just a good movie regardless of qualification and unfortunately I think it is more the former than the latter.

When you find out that this was filmed in a mere 12 days in Whedon’s backyard, it’s not really a surprise. If anything, it puts the film in context. While it is impressive to have jammed the entire enterprise together that quickly, it is entirely obvious that this was not a project of fiercely deliberate preparation. There are blatant edit quirks and none of the camera work is necessarily fancy or impressive. Likewise, the set is what it is: a house. But all of this stripping down works as Whedon’s film thrives on relationships and proses rather than production value.

Nathan Fillion (Firefly) is a standout in this talented cast and although he has limited screen time, he milks his dumbed-down police captain for all the zingers he can get. Likewise, Amy Acker (Cabin in the Woods) and Alexis Denisof (The Avengers) as Beatrice and Benedick respectively, have nice chemistry as they shuffle between playful admonishment and loving adoration on the turn of a dime.

Clark Gregg (The Avengers) and Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods) help fill out the ensemble and both prove their aptitude to chew the scenery as the many relations boil over around them. Although nearly all of their characters are easily influenced one way or another, their performers commit to the oblivious nature of their fickle attitudes with panache.

In Much Ado About Nothing, love is a game of scheming and manipulation. Dissimilarly, Whedon’s interpretation reveals his gambit for exactly what it is: a one-and-done modernized adaptation proud to bear its fuzzy flaws. For what it’s worth, Whedon has produced a charming rendition that is told with eloquence and crafted with care that will be sure to delight those willing to spend an hour catching up with the late, great Shakespeare.

B-

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“The Kings of Summer”
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, Moises Arias, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Marc Evan Jackson, Craig Cackowski and Erin Moriarty
Comedy
93 Mins
R

Jordan Vogt-Roberts has cast his net into a summer overflowing with coming-of-age stories with The Kings of Summer, a film just strange and fantastical enough to leave a little bit of a mark. A lively mish-mash of novel spirit and borrowed plotting, Vogt-Roberts never quite gets a grasp on whether he wanted this to be more Huckleberry Finn or Y Tu Mama Tambien. It’s got a little bit of both but doesn’t quite indulge in the alluringly mystical environment as much as it should have.

Shambling through  spazzed-out and bone-dry comic tilts, The Kings of Summer packs enough laughs to overcome its eventual descent into melodrama where too much stock plot spoils the most intriguing aspects of the feature: three teenage boys trying to live in the wild. 

Joe is our entrance to the film. Played by all-American Nick Robinson, Joe is almost too good looking for his pitiable social standing but we let it slide. Gabriel Basso (Super 8) plays Patrick, Joe’s best friend, social circle equal and confidant. Tired of their overbearing parents and fed-up with their low standing in the social circuit, Joe and Patrick decide to run away from the tedium of their high school lives for a summer to build their own escapist woodland shanty.

Vagrancy has never looked this…well… cool. Joe, Patrick and where-did-he-come-from-Biaggio commit to abandoning familiarity to live off the land and assemble a kick-ass house in the midst of seemingly enchanted woods.

Who is this Biaggio character, you ask? He’s a short, funny looking thing, filled in by a left-field performance from Moises Arias, playing off a Napoleon Dynamite-level of awkward quirk. Although he’s popping off some great one-liners left and right, his character makes no sense in the context of these relationships as he literally shows up out of the blue for little more than comic relief. Even with a hilarious presence, these unaccounted for logic gaps dig head-scratching divots into the natural narrative arc and devalue the overall impact.

On the other side of the spectrum, Nick Offerman is no fool’s gold. He’s the real thing. Screenwriter Chris Galletta‘s words flow from Offerman’s mouth like oily mead: bludgeoning yet perfect. Either Galletta has Offerman’s idiosyncratic, manly-man, sardonic wit down flat or Vogt-Roberts let Offerman channel his inner Ron Swanson and riff off that. Regardless, his character works tremendously and his relationship with his son is hardhearted but emotionally nuanced. In Offerman, the comedy and drama shines.

Lacking the emotional depth of the Offerman-and-son relationship but ratcheting up a different breed of comedy, Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson offer striking satire on the WASP family structure. However innocent their voyeurism is, they are a pair of parents so hands-on that they can’t help themselves but to comment on every single detail of their son Patrick’s life down to his wardrobe. It’s no wonder that he runs away.

Out in the woods, things seem promising but a late second act shift towards a more schmaltzy and familiar path tilt the balance board into bathos. When Patrick and Joe’s friendship is tested over a girl, there’s a palpable collective sigh from the viewership -so I guess this is happening. This wringing of the cultural wash pool for teenage milestones doesn’t destroy the feature but it robs it of its more original platform.

Remaining after the fall is the arresting scenery; even in the whirl of entropy these forested shots are tinted with childhood magic. As an audience, we’re still entranced by the Eden-like qualities of the setting despite the lost sparkle in the character’s relationship-drunken eyes. In becoming “men,” they’ve lost the worth of this place.

Failing to see the forest for the trees, Vogt-Roberts had shoehorned a tired bros-over-hoes message into an otherwise trailblazing narrative. Following a first act that’s solid gold, the film abandons offbeat wit for caged wisdom as conventional as it is predictable. Keeping the esoteric alive in characters like Biaggio and Offerman’s Frank does keep our interest but cements the facts that characters and events in this world are weird and serendipitous for the sake of being weird and serendipitous.

When all is said and done, The Kings of Summer is gratifying escapism with solid laughs, choked out by its willingness to engage in the customary.

C+

“The East”
Directed by Zal Batmanglij
Starring Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård, Toby Kebbell, Shiloh Fernandez, Aldis Hodge, Patricia Clarkson
Thriller, Drama, Mystery
116 Mins
R

The East is neither the first movie about an undercover mole infiltrating an enemy organization, learning the universal worth of their dogma and falling for their leader nor will it be the last. Nonetheless, it’s commendable for its throbbing sense of stakes even in light of the searing self-righteous aplomb beating you over the head at every turn.

However young and fragile she may seem, Sarah (Brit Marling) is a daring security firm agent intent on going deep-cover with an eco-terrorist organization known only as The East whose retaliatory exploits against corporate CEOs have been heavily featured in the media. Cloaked in ragged hipster gear, strapped into Birkenstocks but still smelling of soap, Sarah tries to earn credibility within the rungs of the alternative ragamuffins she’s taken up camp with.

Eventually, she winds up playing wingman to a rare East member and, after slashing herself with a can of coke, is taken to The East’s headquarters to witness their unconventional ways and seemingly violent credo. She immediately forms a bond with their passive but firm leader Benji, played by Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood). To the members of The East, the acts they commit are not terrorism so much as a lesson. They live by the tenants of Hammurabi’s Code: an eye for an eye.

Those who dump oil into the ocean will have oil dumped into their homes. Those who intentionally distribute prescription drugs with devastating side effects will be force-fed those same drugs. Those who operate plants that knowingly poison the local water supply will be forced to bathe in that water. It’s a harsh comeuppance but the organization sees it as a necessary evil to get the world back on track. Toby Kebbell stands out from amongst the cast and acts as the emotional fulcrum, particularly when he recounts the story of his sister’s passing at the hands of an irresponsible pharmaceutical corporation. In time, Sarah begins to see the world through their eyes and is torn between the responsibilities of her past life and her newfound kinship with The East.

As individual elements, the characters work great but there’s a flatness between the two leads that you can’t quite put your finger on. Skarsgård is captivating and Marling manages to juggle the duality of her character with ease but their chemistry feels a little forced. Rather than an organic connection, this supposedly unexpected relationship was exactly the opposite. It felt like a fore-drawn conclusion created within a script rather than a natural character progression.

Somewhere between the center and the outskirts of the story is Ellen Page (Inception, Juno) whose role was an undeniable letdown. Her character plays the nonsensical narrative scapegoat with her alliances and motivations shifting on a dime. Chop her into two and she wouldn’t be this lumped together, confused amalgamation.

However nonchalantly you interpret the corporate threat to our world lingering within the film, the brazen political positioning is sure to make you feel something, forcing you to shimmy to one side or the other depending on the presumptions you enter the theater with and your willingness to engage with the material presented.

As such, The East is an interactive experience demanding viewers to take a stance and wrestle with it throughout. But buried in all this palpable, self-serious introspection, there is a fun spy thriller that breathes life, stakes and momentum into the piece allowing it to be more than just a downtrodden and pedantic procedural.

The jury is out as to whether this thinly masked political subterfuge will be effective as catalyzing filmmaking but you have to respect Zal Batmanglij for trying. Too often, movies don’t bother with a message or their agenda is too broadly painted to be definitively interpretable and thus meaningful. Batmanglij though broadcasts his eco-friendly stance here even more so than James Cameron with Avatar. Lobbing stink bombs at corporations may seem like a fruitless undertaking, especially under the auspices of Fox Searchlight, but at least Batmanglij is taking a step in the right direction.

As a thriller, The East has an extraordinary first and second act but is jarringly interrupted and the hard-earned edge-of-your-seat involvement spills over like a glass of milk. As a lesson in morality and escalation, the lines seem a little more blurred. This is clearly wishful thinking. As the film builds to climaxes of shifty moral ambiguities, its self-serious nature takes precedence over the sheer uninhibited fun set lose in the thriller components and limits it from reaching heights within its grasp.