It's time to go Galt: Atlas Shrugged movie is a winner

Finally a movie comes along that sticks it to the ruling class that is deliberately and maliciously driving America into the ground. The message of the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s 1,200-page opus, Atlas Shrugged, is that the productive should be able to go about their business without being hindered by the nonproductive and the anti-productive mischief makers of government. It is a celebration of the many virtues of capitalism, a topic I editorialized about previously at NewsReal.
And it turns out it’s surprisingly good! I saw the movie Wednesday at a special advance screening kindly provided by the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.
This is not to knock the feature-length film unduly, but given its subject matter it’s amazing that it works as a movie. There is so much information, so much political economy and philosophy, packed into so little movie. The novel simply doesn’t translate easily to the silver screen and yet the movie is a pleasure to watch.
If at times the dialogue seems a bit wooden, a bit unnatural, like in a soap opera where the players are constantly referencing a large cast of characters and a multitude of events outside the frame, it’s because the screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole is more or less faithful to the complex, wordy novel.
The movie, directed by Paul Johansson, keeps moving forward relentlessly without a mountain of distracting side plots. It has wonderful photography and excellent production values.


In the various characters such as sleazeball lobbyist Wesley Mouch (played by Michael Lerner) and twisted industrialist Orren Boyle (played by Jon Polito) you can see characters from America’s real life, unstable, thoroughly corrupt mixed economy. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and President Barack Obama did not make an appearance in the movie. They didn’t need to be there because the statist, left-wing ugliness they stand for was already well represented in the dramatis personae.
It’s not going to win any Oscars for various reasons but it is definitely worth seeing, especially if you care about America and want to reverse its planned decline.
Just as they despise Ayn Rand’s philosophy of enlightened self-interest –and yes, it is a philosophy even though academic snobs ridicule it— critics are going to hate it. Socialist pseudo-intellectual Roger Ebert will trash it.
My guess is alleged conservative Michael Medved will put it down when he reviews it. I mean this is a guy who thought the remake of The Omen was much better than the original. The first flick had too many “first time director mistakes” in it, he told me after giving a talk at the National Press Club a few years ago. Give me a break.
But I digress.
The movie opens, appropriately, on April 15 – Tax Day. Go see it and give a one-finger salute to the looters and parasites who run and influence government and who got America into its current predicament.
And there are still two more parts to look forward to in this epic cinematic trilogy.
(official movie website)
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