"THE EAST" TAKES A NEW DIRECTION

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

 

 

Imagine a modern action thriller that challengesyour mind instead of your patience. We’re talking “The East,” now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd.

Though the film is full of espionage and intrigue, it is not set in the Far East or Eastern Europe.

This picture directed and co-written by Zal Batmanglij with actor and co-writer Brit Marling takes place right here in America. Ignoring all the usual cinema directives, “The East” is breaking new ground in its observations of world-wide corporations challenging any and all comers – including hard core environmentalists whose methods are insidious as their objectives are idealistic.

Talk about doing the wrong thing for the right reason.  Remember when Greenpeace began using “direct action,” as they called it, to protest nuclear testing, commercial whaling and the like?

Well, “The East” takes this combative strategy to a World Trade Center level of involvement.

Eco-terrorists are conducting raids on Big Pharma and Sarah Moss (Marling) is an ex-F.B.I. operative working for a high tech private intelligence firm hired by one of those pharmaceutical giants for protection.

This firm of civilian spooks is run by ice cold Sharon (a note perfect Patricia Clarkson), who guarantees her employer will see results. Sharon assigns Moss to infiltrate an eco-terrorist cell known as the East.

Since the cloak-and-dagger game is fairly new to the corporate world, Moss feels like her bag of well seasoned tricks will be more than up to the task.

Posing as a dumpster diving derelict, Moss is quickly noticed by cell members who are also out dumpster diving to keep in touch with their contacts among the street people.

But decades of hippie intuition have sharpened the instincts of suspicious Izzy (a brilliantly sullen Ellen Page). She thinks Moss is too slick, too much together. Something doesn’t smell right.

Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) is the cell leader, a combination of Jesus and Charles Manson. But Benji (being a guy) lets his armor down when he begins to think Moss is kind of cute.

Co-writers Marling and Batmanglij aren’t promoting feminism so much as they are exploring a wide spectrum of personalities, moral issued and ethical dilemmas.

In this continuous conflict between making millions of dollars and doing the right thing, everyone who takes sides is a little bit right and a little bit wrong. “The East” is a powerful reminder that the nation which survives in today’s contentious world culture is not the one that is strongest, but the one that is smartest.