Reviewed By Vivian Moreau
If This Revolution doesn’t launch you out of your seat with your fist in the air, nothing will. Director and screenwriter Stephen Marshall’s look at America’s big brother reality seamlessly combines documentary and drama, raising the bar to a new level of excellence for the genre.
No Michael Moore cheesiness here, as jaded former embedded shooter Jake Cassavetes tracks dissidents just before the 2004 Republican convention in New York. "Jake has an instinct for conflict," Jake’s network boss notes, foreshadowing the big blow out which leads to his betrayal. Betrayal and redemption are the themes here: betrayal of a government to its citizens and of lovers to one another. How betrayal can be so entrenched it’s discounted but also how personal reckoning and the one grand gesture can bless an individual.
Nathan Crooker is perfect as the haggard, rumpled cameraman whose life is refreshed by Ritchie (a disarming Brett Delbuono), an activist’s son he meets when he catches the boy trying to steal a hubcap. Jake’s complacency is shaken by Ritchie’s mom Tina (the luscious Rosario Dawson) and her spirited conviction of what America could and should be.
A kick butt soundtrack gives this film a gritty outline with tracks contributed by rapper Immortal Technique, with a cameo role as himself. This Revolution is a careful rendering of how easily the media can be corrupted by largesse, how one individual can be sucked into the maelstrom without even realizing it, but also how a life can be examined and redeemed at any point.
This Revolution
plays Friday, Dec. 2, 7 p.m. at MY Millennium Place as part of the Whistler Film Festival.
