Wake your sophomore year-self up and meet everyone in the dorm common room, because I have a got a treat for you. After being hastily cobbled together before the producers lost the rights, Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 has released its first trailer. And sweet, suffering Bolshevism, is it a doozy.
Now, regardless of what I think of Ayn Rand and her "school of philosophy," I'm going to try to remain objective [hi-yo!] and just discuss as I would any other movie. Any other cruddy, cheap looking movie.
In a nutshell, Dagny Tagart's (Taylor Schilling) railway company is foundering, and Tagart turns to Hank Rearden's (Grant Bowler) steel company to revolutionize the rail network and save her company. But of course, the government hates and fears personal enterprise and individual accomplishment, and so place its heavy federal hand directly in the way of innovation. Plus, trains. Lots and lots of trains; enough to stock several thousand sexy metaphors.
In a brief critique of the plot, I don't know why the producers didn't A.) make it a period piece or B.) change the plot details, because insisting on matching the novel's idea of "revolutionizing the railways" in this country is a bit like saying you've got a humdinger of a brainstorm for the horse and buggy industry. But leaving that aside, it just looks shoddily made: the colors look off, the CGI looks like something from the local Action News at 5, and the dialogue is as ripe as a brown banana. Low budget doesn't necessarily have to mean chintzy, but this movie looks even cheaper than it's reported $5 million budget.
Verdict: I refuse to subsidize inferior products with the fruits of my own labor -- Pass!