Atlas Shrugged

I had the chance to enjoy an independent film with my Grandparents, Atlas Shrugged Part 1. This first installment of the trilogy of Ayn Rand's Epic, covered the entire plot up to Ellis Wyatt's Destruction of the Colorado Oil Fields.

Instead of making the story a period-piece, the director Paul Johansson contemporized the plot by setting the characters in 2016 after a war in the Middleast cuts off oil shippments to the West driving gas prices to $36 a gallon. Under this dystopian future scenario, the only feasible means of transportation of people and commodities is rail power. (Modern CSX freight trains can move 2,000lbs --907 kilograms-- 500 miles on one gallon of fuel) This allowed me as a admirer of Rand's Objectivism to suspend my disbelief and fall into the story.

Dagny, acted by Taylor Schilling, is just as brutal and sublime as the one conjured in my imagination the first time I read the novel. She faces the world and never backs down as her universe spirals out of control. The male leads were well acted and for the movie's small budget ($1o million) did not detract at all. Still it would have been really cool to have had Angelina Jolie and Brad Pit as the iconic Duo of Hank Rearden and Dangny Tagart. But contractual obligations prohibited it. The $1.7 million gross for the opening weekend may allow the productions costs to be covered but indicate that there will be no part 2 or climactic part 3.

I love the novel too much to offer an objective review of this "Objective-ly" awesome movie.

The obvious flaw in Objectivism still doesn't shade Rand's fun Novels. Check out Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead today.