Atlas Shrugged Part 1 [HD]

Thoughts on Atlas Shrugged Part 1
Being a big fan of Ayn Rand's great novel Atlas Shrugged, I expect a less-than-stellar movie version of the book. Happily, I was very pleased with the first installment of the film.

With the length and scope of the story, it requires either an incredibly long movie or a division into different parts, which they decided to do here. While I've heard plenty about the overall low budget of the film, it is still very well done and they spent some good money on CGI effects for the John Galt Line. Taylor Schilling is actually very good as Dagny Taggart - she projects the high-end efficiency and passion of the character, and she is appropriately sexy as well. Grant Bowler as Hank Reardon turns out to be a decent choice as well.

Bottom line, though: I brought along my 16-year-old daughter to see the film, and I expected her to find it "boring" or otherwise uninteresting. Big surprise, though: she loved it! She likes the story and was very drawn to the character of Dagny...

Good despite the negativity of many reviews
I've never read Atlas Shrugged, and probably never will, so I wasn't familiar with the story at all. When the movie was originally released at the theaters, I read one bad review after another, so I opted not to see it at that time. The move recently went on sale with Amazon, so I bought it and watched it. I came away from the movie surprised; surprised at why it got bad reviews and surprised it didn't do better at the box office despite the bad reviews.

For certain, if you're looking for a movie with explosions, action, comedy, gratuitous sex or horror, you're not going to find Atlas Shrugged worth watching, but if you're looking for an erudite, smart and philosophical movie, Atlas Shrugged hits the mark. The complaints about poor production are so wrong it logical to assume it ideologically driven. The acting it convincing and realistic; anyone who's worked for a successful, self-made business person will quickly recognize the character of "Hank Reardon". And the...

Excellent Adaptation . . .
This movie is Part 1 of three parts; and it covers the first part of the book.

The movie is well made - the quality is actually quite good. Acting was generally good to excellent. Camera work was good; although the low budget resulted in a missing camera angle here and there. Special effects were consistently well done.

The story, of course, is exceptional; and it is well-told in this movie.

Numbers I've seen indicate 80% of the audience (more than 12,000 people were polled) give this movie a thumbs up. And yet, only about 13% of professional movie critics gave this a thumbs up. By voting it down, the professional movie critics really got it wrong. Why? I don't know . . . I am truly surprised that so many movie critics would allow their own political bias to influence their review - but I can find no objective reason for the critics' poor grades.

Some people would say that those of the liberal persuasion would not enjoy this; as the...

Click to Editorial Reviews