Weekly round-up

Punished protestors and horny high schoolers

TEEN TRASH: Sex Drive

by CHRISTOPHER SYKES

Battle in Seattle
The images broadcast from the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle were dire ones indeed. Masked anarchists hurling bricks through windows. Shield-wielding police swinging batons at thousands of placard-carrying protesters. The world watched as all hell broke loose in the progressive Pacific coast city. Actor-turned-director Stuart Townsend recreates the Washington State war zone in his first feature, Battle in Seattle.

Ray Liotta stars as the good guy stuck between a cobblestone and a hard place. As Mayor Jim Tobin, he’s given his word to protest coordinator Jay (Martin Henderson) that no one will be gassed or arrested. That is until the media’s carnivorous reporting of balaclava-covered youths (seemingly) destroying everything in sight forces the hand of his superiors. The police are ordered to crack down, and badges like Dale (Woody Harrelson) are sent to do the dirty work. The result is a Machiavallian clusterfuck of violence that leads to his own wife Ella’s (Townsend’s real-life girlfriend Charlize Theron) miscarriage.

It’s necessary to reaffirm Battle is a work of fiction. Its detractors will denounce an overabundance of characters that limit Townsend’s ability to develop his main storyline, and that the politics are so heavily biased that it’s tantamount to preaching to the converted.

I, on the other hand, took any shortcomings with a grain of salt. The pic’s politics can be passed off as preachy because of its damning portrayal of the grave injustices suffered by so many of the civilian protesters. Sometimes a film is preachy because it’s got a hell of a lot to preach about.

Townsend successfully marries documentary footage from the actual protests with staged reenactments in such as way as to make a room full of hardened film critics audibly gasp. Any film that manages to do that is well worth the price of admission, in this critic’s opinion.

ANARCHY IN THE U.S.A.: Battle in Seattle

Sex Drive
After peeking at a press kit for Sex Drive, the new teen comedy by rookie director Sean Anders, I had a sneaking suspicion there were few surprises in store. The stalwarts for the genre were all there: a reluctant high school virgin, an ill-planned road trip and a worldly BFF who wants to get a brother laid. Not too tough to see where this is going, I said to myself.

Yet, upon screening, I’d be willing to take it one step further. In a pic with very little substance to begin with, there’s literally nothing in this flick you haven’t seen before. Picking and choosing highlights from a medley of teen pics spanning the last couple of decades, Drive is best described as stuffing a smorgasbord of high school gross-out comedies into a cinematic blender and hitting “frappé.”

Chicago suburbanites and best buds Ian (Josh Zuckerman) and Lance (Clark Duke) depart in a “borrowed” Pontiac GTO on a 500-mile booty call to Knoxville. Horndog Ian has been online messaging a girl by the name of Ms. Tasty (Katrina Bowden) who’s hungry for his cherry. The ace in the hole is gal pal Felicia (Langley, B.C.’s Amanda Crew) who tags along for the ride. Ian’s been in love with Felicia, like, forever but she’s got a crush on Lance. The gruesome threesome have got some choosin’ to do.

Rest assured Sex Drive mixes that teen comedy stalwart homophobia with good-natured, brazenly phallocentric misogyny. Ah misogyny, apple of my eye. How the teen pic loves you so. As if there was ever any doubt, there will be vag for the dorky Ian. Not that I gave a shit by the time it actually happened. It’s films like this that make a guy realize just how solid Superbad was in contrast.

BOTH FILMS OPEN THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 17