Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is about a socialist dystopia coupled with an unusual love story about two people, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, who prefer having intellectually charged conversations with each other about business and technology than engaging in artificial small talk with everyone else.
Many of these thrilling elements were already lost in the first instalment of Atlas Shrugged which made the mistake of trying to make its protagonists, Dagny and Hank, seem like normal people. This was a mistake that even good acting by Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler could not remedy. The second instalment compounds the error by making these two characters, who are supposed to carry the film on their shoulders, even less appealing and interesting than they were in the first part of the trilogy. Samantha Morton (who replaced Taylor Schilling as Dagny) was never a good actress, but at least she had a youthful spark and sex appeal back in the 1990s. Now middle aged, Morton is just an unattractive actress who can't act. Yet if Morton's acting is bad, then Jason Beghe (who replaced Grant Bowler as Hank Rearden) is an even bigger drag on the film. He comes across as a grumpy 1950s grandpa who orders children to get off his lawn. Why these two characters would take any interest in each other at all is beyond me.
The plot can be boiled down to one message: the right-wing entrepreneurs are noble, chivalrous creatures who benefit all of mankind by making big profits and inventing fantastic gadgets, while the government, the state-funded science academies, and the Occupy Street rabble are stupid, jealous, losers who want to confiscate the hard- earned wealth of these captains of industry. To be sure, I have no objection to the film making this argument or any other argument. The problem is that I got this message at the beginning of this movie and I do not need to be reminded of it in subsequent scenes. Moreover, there is absolutely nothing in this entire film that adds to this message which seemed new and sexy for the 1950s, but is quite dated and unimpressive now given that right-wing think tanks and the lobbyists for the so-called noble right-wing entrepreneurs largely control public policymaking in Washington D.C.
Many of these thrilling elements were already lost in the first instalment of Atlas Shrugged which made the mistake of trying to make its protagonists, Dagny and Hank, seem like normal people. This was a mistake that even good acting by Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler could not remedy. The second instalment compounds the error by making these two characters, who are supposed to carry the film on their shoulders, even less appealing and interesting than they were in the first part of the trilogy. Samantha Morton (who replaced Taylor Schilling as Dagny) was never a good actress, but at least she had a youthful spark and sex appeal back in the 1990s. Now middle aged, Morton is just an unattractive actress who can't act. Yet if Morton's acting is bad, then Jason Beghe (who replaced Grant Bowler as Hank Rearden) is an even bigger drag on the film. He comes across as a grumpy 1950s grandpa who orders children to get off his lawn. Why these two characters would take any interest in each other at all is beyond me.
The plot can be boiled down to one message: the right-wing entrepreneurs are noble, chivalrous creatures who benefit all of mankind by making big profits and inventing fantastic gadgets, while the government, the state-funded science academies, and the Occupy Street rabble are stupid, jealous, losers who want to confiscate the hard- earned wealth of these captains of industry. To be sure, I have no objection to the film making this argument or any other argument. The problem is that I got this message at the beginning of this movie and I do not need to be reminded of it in subsequent scenes. Moreover, there is absolutely nothing in this entire film that adds to this message which seemed new and sexy for the 1950s, but is quite dated and unimpressive now given that right-wing think tanks and the lobbyists for the so-called noble right-wing entrepreneurs largely control public policymaking in Washington D.C.