Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) – Rotten Tomatoes

Critics Consensus

Passionate ideologues may find it compelling, but most filmgoers will find this low-budget adaptation of the Ayn Rand bestseller decidedly lacking.

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Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) runs Taggart Transcontinental, the largest remaining railroad company in America, with intelligence, courage and integrity, despite the systematic disappearance of her best and most competent workers. She is drawn to industrialist Henry Rearden (Grant Bowler), one of the few men whose genius and commitment to his own ideas match her own. Rearden's super-strength metal alloy, Rearden Metal, holds the promise that innovation can overcome the slide into anarchy. Using the untested Rearden Metal, they rebuild the critical Taggart rail line in Colorado and pave the way for oil titan Ellis Wyatt (Graham Beckel) to feed the flame of a new American Renaissance. Hope rises again, when Dagny and Rearden discover the design of a revolutionary motor based on static electricity - in an abandoned engine factory - more proof to the sinister theory that the "men of the mind" (thinkers, industrialists, scientists, artists, and other innovators) are "on strike" and vanishing from society. -- (C) Official Site

Jun 29, 2014

Finally, someone actually made the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged come true. The first part of Atlas Shrugged consists of the 10 chapters from part 1 of the book, we are introduced to Dagny Taggart the savvy headstrong businesswoman who struggles to overcome the regulations from the government (and her own brother) to maintain the family business in railroad company, she saw the opportunity to revive the company through the use of a new type of steel invented by Henry "Hank" Rearden to lay the tracks. Despite the public tried to do everything to stop her, she held on to her belief and it was a success. She then discovered a revolutionary motor which could convert static electricity to kinetic energy along with Hank, but the motor was incomplete and abandoned by the inventor. As she tried to track down the inventor, government moves closer and closer to destroy her. I was thrilled to see this film as I've read the book and regarding it as one of the highest achievements in human history, but the film simply did not live up to the standard I expected nor as the standard of the book. The script did not come even close to what the book has written, yeh I was excited to hear the dialogues that followed the lines from the book but they were slightly altered for the sake of the less intelligent; the film was really rushed that it missed out a lot of the important details from the book. I mean, how can you transform 300 pages of words into a movie that only last 102 minutes? Even Dead Until Dark was adapted to 12 hours of True Blood and it was only 292 pages long. The film only covered the surface of the novel without going into the theories of Objectivism, Ayn Rand would be so mad if she was alive today and saw the film (as she did with The Fountainhead) The best part of the film was the casting, each character was exactly as what I would imagine for them to look like (except Hank would is blond in the book) Taylor Schilling was simply divine, I wouldn't find anyone else to play Dagny than her, she did a marvelous job. Grant Bowler was perfect too! (Kiwi pride) but the best casting award has to go to Rebecca Wisocky, she was perfect to play Hank's devious moocher wife. The main theme was great, it gave me the chills. The set design was simply yet great, extremely dystopian yet balanced out the limitation of having such a low budget. Overall, ambitious yet felt short.

Jun 25, 2013

Interesting. Slightly confusing. Apparently, a continuing saga...

Dec 29, 2012

"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" starts on September 2, 2016 with the derailment of a train on a critical stretch of track in Colorado that is going to delay gas shipments to the east coast for at least a couple of weeks. Making matters worse is that the steel shipment that Taggart Transcontinental so badly needs to effect repairs has already been back ordered for two months. So, Dagny Taggart(Taylor Schilling) overrides her brother James(Matthew Marsden) by going with an untested process that Henry Rearden(Grant Bowler) has developed. His being flush with business does not mean his wife(Rebecca Wisocky) has to like the bracelet he made for her, however.Admittedly, I am a sucker for dystopias, especially those where the main form of transportation is via train. And "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" does use that plot device to neatly update from the past to the current near future. Weirdly enough, this political movie is set at the time of a Presidential election(my money is on Cuomo vs. Christie, by the way) without mentioning one at all, taking the easy route to try to implicate Obama in all of the world's sins. For the record, regulation is meant to save business from its worst impulses, like insuring that tracks are replaced more often than once a hundred years, even as I think regulating the size of soft drinks is more than a little silly. If only shaky politics were the worst of this movie's sins, it would not be so bad, but alas it is, seeped in talky amateurism and animatronic acting that includes even the veteran character actors in the cast.

May 06, 2012

I've never read the book but I had some concept of what this was about. It left me a little bit confused and hanging at the end.

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Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) - Rotten Tomatoes