Movie: The East

The East:  an excellent Ridley Scott thriller directed by Zal Batmanglij from a script he wrote with Brit Marling.  The primary characters are anarchists (“eco-terrorists”) operating under the name “East”.  The lead character, Jane, is played by co-writer Marling, works for a private security company.   She is a former FBI agent whose boss at the private security company is played by Patricia Clarkson, a very chilly and mercenary persona.  Although the head of East is a male, Benji, played by Alexander Sharsgard, the truly interesting East members are female, including a strong performance by Ellen Page as Izzy.  Jane is sent into the field with the pseudonym, Sarah, to locate the East.  She rides the rails along the Eastern seaboard to make her connection with East, and even though this is a contemporary film, the brief rail scene with the railway men could have been taken from a 1930’s film.  Once Jane makes her connection with East, the movie becomes quite interesting.  The group lives at a burned out house in a forest that I think is in Pennsylvania (movie does not provide a specific location).  The transformation of Jane into Sarah and the subsequent integration of Sarah into the group is well done.  Key question becomes whether Jane, as Sarah, will be a Stockholm syndrome victim.  Part of the film’s fascination is trying to guess which person, Sarah or Jane, will dominate; the conclusion is not obvious.  The actions of the anarchists, which they refer to as “jams”, include giving drug company executives champagne laced with their own FDA approved drug at a celebration party (the side effects are real) and having chemical company executives go swimming in water that contains their own contamination – the latter has a hokey element but well done because of Page’s excellence as an actress (one of the chemical executives is Page’s father).  The East wants to hold the executives responsible and accomplishes this by turning their own activity against them.  The film works because it dwells more on the individual characters than on their jams.  In fact, only brief parts of the 116 minute film are devoted to the actual jams.  All the East members appear to come from privileged homes but were spurred towards activism by their own underlying issues.  The only character whose life choice is fully explained is Doc (Toby Kebbell), who took the drug while working in Kenya  as a medical aid.  While watching this film, I did not know how it would end and I was pleased with the ending.  So far, this is my second best movie of 2014 with ”Mud” still holding first place.