The East Reviews
Carlos M
Super Reviewer
October 4, 2013
The kind of stupid thriller that tries to pass as nuanced but only insults our intelligence with too much exposition and gaps in logic that make any suspension of disbelief impossible. And Brit Marling makes it worse playing a character who can't convince as an undercover agent.
familiar s
Super Reviewer
September 23, 2013
Tries hard, and was almost going to fall flat. Admittedly, my fault that I expected a bit too much from it. But it did sound appealing.
Thomas J
Super Reviewer
June 9, 2013
If the story had not taken so long to get started... this would have been a great movie. It is really good, but falls short of its potential.
Bathsheba Monk
Super Reviewer
July 1, 2013
This one cuts pretty close to the bone of corporate greed and its consequences; also, the consequences of a radical group adopting its own ruthless SOP. Lots of questions. No answers. Unbelievably small audience--5 of us on a Sunday night. I suspect this one, because of its subversive message, will slide into obscurity pretty quickly.
Liam G
Super Reviewer
January 23, 2013
A tense and well-directed thriller that raises some very interesting questions.
www.themoviewaffler.com
Super Reviewer
June 30, 2013
"If you live with white supremacists, you'll eventually sympathize with them", Sarah's boss tells her at one point of self-doubt. It's a knowing nod to Costa-Gavras' under-rated 1988 thriller 'Betrayed', in which Debra Winger plays an undercover FBI agent who falls for Tom Berenger's Klansman. Gavras' movie took the basic premise of Hitchcock's 'Notorious' but posed the question "What if Ingrid Bergman's spy fell in love with Claude Rains' Nazi?" Paul Verhoeven examined this in detail with his 2006 Dutch thriller, 'Black Book'. 'Donnie Brasco' took the premise and reworked it as a platonic bromance. It's a formula which has yielded overwhelmingly positive results, and 'The East' is no exception.
As director and co-writer with his leading lady Marling, Batmanglij has announced himself as a film-maker to keep an eye on. With the exception of an unnecessary sub-plot involving Sarah's disillusioned boyfriend, the script is watertight and structurally sound enough to be held up as an example in screenwriting classes. There's no expository dialogue and we're never left scratching our heads trying to piece things together, a rarity in modern American cinema. We get some brilliant moments of visual storytelling, best of all a scene involving a unique dinner ritual. A set-piece with poisoned champagne would have Hitchcock smiling and when Sarah has to perform impromptu surgery on a gunshot victim it's made all the more tense having earlier shown her make a mess of gutting a deer for its meat.
Marling caught my attention a couple of years ago in the impressive low budget sci-fi romance 'Another Earth' and she's appeared in thankless minor roles since. Here she proves a magnetic lead and acts the over-rated Ellen Page off the screen in their moments together. Swedish actor Skarsgard (son of Lars Von Trier regular Stellan) manages to make his character both creepy and sympathetic.
My one complaint is the amount of make-up these characters wear. They may have a gripe with the pharmaceutical firms but it seemingly doesn't extend to the cosmetics industry.
The East, an eco-terrorist group, have been waging a war against unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies. Sarah Moss (Marling) is an operative for a private intelligence firm who infiltrates the group, staying with them in their remote wooded hideaway. Once undercover, Sarah begins to sympathize with their cause, while being shocked at their increasingly dangerous and aggressive methods. When she develops feelings for the group's unofficial leader Benji (Skarsgard), Sarah finds herself torn between The East and her employers.
"If you live with white supremacists, you'll eventually sympathize with them", Sarah's boss tells her at one point of self-doubt. It's a knowing nod to Costa-Gavras' under-rated 1988 thriller 'Betrayed', in which Debra Winger plays an undercover FBI agent who falls for Tom Berenger's Klansman. Gavras' movie took the basic premise of Hitchcock's 'Notorious' but posed the question "What if Ingrid Bergman's spy fell in love with Claude Rains' Nazi?" Paul Verhoeven examined this in detail with his 2006 Dutch thriller, 'Black Book'. 'Donnie Brasco' took the premise and reworked it as a platonic bromance. It's a formula which has yielded overwhelmingly positive results, and 'The East' is no exception.
As director and co-writer with his leading lady Marling, Batmanglij has announced himself as a film-maker to keep an eye on. With the exception of an unnecessary sub-plot involving Sarah's disillusioned boyfriend, the script is watertight and structurally sound enough to be held up as an example in screenwriting classes. There's no expository dialogue and we're never left scratching our heads trying to piece things together, a rarity in modern American cinema. We get some brilliant moments of visual storytelling, best of all a scene involving a unique dinner ritual. A set-piece with poisoned champagne would have Hitchcock smiling and when Sarah has to perform impromptu surgery on a gunshot victim it's made all the more tense having earlier shown her make a mess of gutting a deer for its meat.
Marling caught my attention a couple of years ago in the impressive low budget sci-fi romance 'Another Earth' and she's appeared in thankless minor roles since. Here she proves a magnetic lead and acts the over-rated Ellen Page off the screen in their moments together. Swedish actor Skarsgard (son of Lars Von Trier regular Stellan) manages to make his character both creepy and sympathetic.
My one complaint is the amount of make-up these characters wear. They may have a gripe with the pharmaceutical firms but it seemingly doesn't extend to the cosmetics industry.
Harlequin68
Super Reviewer
June 17, 2013
"The East" is an intelligent and thoughtful movie that is also one of the rare movies to take a look at class in the United States. Even undercover, Jane speaks up for public education and wears her University of Maryland sweatshirt while jogging in Georgetown.(She is also quite resourceful and formidable.) Like many people, she finds herself in the awkward position of needing her creature comforts and taking a job that pays better which conflicts with her core belief which in this case is justice. And the movie is in a similar position, shuttling between two different opposing camps that exist in a gray world. The performances are nuanced enough to match that balance. However, the movie's ending could have been better as it lacks the ambiguity that kept the movie going until then.
In "The East," Jane Owen(Brit Marling, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij) is a former FBI agent now working for a private security firm. She is assigned by her boss Sharon(Patricia Clarkson) to infilatrate an eco-terrorist cell called The East which will take Jane away from her boyfriend Tim(Jason Ritter) for an unspecified period of time. To that end, Jane starts by hitchhiking and hanging out with various drifters before hitting paydirt when she takes a punch from the cops for Luca(Shiloh Fernandez). Faking an injury, she is brought to meet Izzy(Ellen Page) and Benji(Alexander Skarsgard), two of the facilitators of The East.
"The East" is an intelligent and thoughtful movie that is also one of the rare movies to take a look at class in the United States. Even undercover, Jane speaks up for public education and wears her University of Maryland sweatshirt while jogging in Georgetown.(She is also quite resourceful and formidable.) Like many people, she finds herself in the awkward position of needing her creature comforts and taking a job that pays better which conflicts with her core belief which in this case is justice. And the movie is in a similar position, shuttling between two different opposing camps that exist in a gray world. The performances are nuanced enough to match that balance. However, the movie's ending could have been better as it lacks the ambiguity that kept the movie going until then.
PantaOz
Super Reviewer
September 10, 2013
The story was intelligent, engaging, relevant and can interest almost everyone on this planet. Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) is a former FBI agent who now works as an operative for the private intelligence firm Hiller Brood, headed by Sharon (Patricia Clarkson). Under the pretext of going to Dubai, Sarah is dropped off at Dulles Airport by her boyfriend, Tim (Jason Ritter) but instead of going through security Sarah gets out of the airport and at the nearby motel starts the process of going undercover. Disguised, she hits the road in search of The East (an underground activist group) with the mission to locate their headquarters and feed information about the group to Hiller Brood in order for Sharon to protect her corporate clients. The group is led by the charismatic Benji (Alexander Skarsgård).
This clever, tense involving spy drama builds to a terrific level of intrigue before losing some steam of the incredibly fast pace in its second half. It is interesting that is a very smoothly made big-studio movie which makes you think - on the other hand it nearly succeeds as a pure adrenaline-rush thriller.
The latest thriller I watched directed by Zal Batmanglij and starring Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård, and Ellen Page was something I enjoyed immensely. Writers Batmanglij and Marling spent two months in 2009 practicing freeganism - the practice of reclaiming and eating food that has been discarded. Freegans and Freeganism are often seen as part of a wider "anti-consumerist" ideology, and freegans often employ a range of alternative living strategies based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Inspired by their own experiences and drawing on thrillers from the 1970s they wrote this wonderful screenplay. The East was filmed in two months in Shreveport, Louisiana at the end of 2011. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2013.
The story was intelligent, engaging, relevant and can interest almost everyone on this planet. Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) is a former FBI agent who now works as an operative for the private intelligence firm Hiller Brood, headed by Sharon (Patricia Clarkson). Under the pretext of going to Dubai, Sarah is dropped off at Dulles Airport by her boyfriend, Tim (Jason Ritter) but instead of going through security Sarah gets out of the airport and at the nearby motel starts the process of going undercover. Disguised, she hits the road in search of The East (an underground activist group) with the mission to locate their headquarters and feed information about the group to Hiller Brood in order for Sharon to protect her corporate clients. The group is led by the charismatic Benji (Alexander Skarsgård).
This clever, tense involving spy drama builds to a terrific level of intrigue before losing some steam of the incredibly fast pace in its second half. It is interesting that is a very smoothly made big-studio movie which makes you think - on the other hand it nearly succeeds as a pure adrenaline-rush thriller.
Luke E
Super Reviewer
August 12, 2013
Writer/Actress; Brit Marling, has come a long way from both 'Another Earth' and 'Sound of My Voice'. 'The East' may as well be her and director; Zal Batmanglij's finest effort yet. The story centers on an FBI agent (Marling) assigned to infiltrate a group of cunning Eco Terrorists, along the way she's soon split between two worlds. The film has a much more bigger scale than any of the team's previous efforts, In many ways its an almost flawless political/spy thriller. The film's subtext provides a very big thought provoking landscape as well as encountering unexpected twists and turns. This is a film with some touch of star power, tensely exciting and never fails to lose its human element. Overall My last film at MIFF became my favourite of the entire festival, surpassing my expectations.
Joey S
Super Reviewer
June 26, 2013
The East is a smart political thriller about ecoterrorism that is exciting and engaging despite an overly long running time and an ending that feels out of place when compared to the rest of the movie. It follows Sarah (Brit Marling), a woman who works for an intelligence agency and is assigned to go undercover and take down a mysterious group of environmental terrorists known as The East. The East operates with an eye-for-an-eye philosophy in punishing corporations that harm people and the environment, and soon Sarah begins to sympathize with their cause and is forced to question her loyalties. Brit Marling, who not only stars but also co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij, is great in the lead role and, ignoring the contrived finale, the script she and Batmanglij wrote makes the movie not only thrilling but also unpredictable. Alexander Skarsgard of The Vampire Diaries fame is also fantastic as the leader of The East and he is definitely one of the highlights of the movie. The last scene is a little too neat and tidy to be entirely satisfying, and it doesn't live up to the quality of everything that led up to it. It almost seems like they were just not sure how to end the movie, so they just slapped on a generic ending and hoped it would stick. Despite this weak ending though, everything that comes before the ending is grade-A thriller material and it makes The East more than engaging and intelligent enough to be a surprising and enjoyable thriller with standout performances from Marling and Skarsgard.
Lane Z
Super Reviewer
September 4, 2013
A very well executed political thriller that strikes closer to home because of the human element. There's a good story here. It is also well acted. The highlights come mostly from Brit Marling. Haven't seen her in much, but she carries the lead role easily enough. Skarsgard is a towering and imposing presence, and Page is just given enough material to make a small mark. There is definitely a message within this film. Big corporations getting away with whatever they desire by throwing money at the problem. The whole message is making them pay and holding them accountable for their actions, but what's nice about the movie is they don't impress it upon the viewer. You're there more to watch and enjoy the film rather than be immersed in the message. I didn't like the open endedness of the ending. It leaves you tense through the film, but the last 15 minutes sort of wipe that all away. Not completely, but just enough to go, "aw man".
DA Z
Super Reviewer
June 4, 2013
As if I didn't adore Brit Marling enough before this film, The East has earned her a spot as one of the greatest writers, directors, and actresses of our generation. The East is a strongly built political and socio-economical statement that makes you question how much power our government truly has over us. It is much more than an intelligently written thriller. The East is a beautifully artistic and darkly vengeful story of truth, empathy, and sacrifice. This film will make you question everything you've ever believed about governmental and corporative power in a way that few, if any, films have ever done before. A perfect cast and an intellectually spellbinding plot have made The East, by far, one of the best films of 2013.
Christopher H
Super Reviewer
January 21, 2013
Not only is "The East" an entertaining thriller starring Brit Marling as an undercover operative for an intelligence firm, it also hits some very valid points on social injustice and the state of our environment. Written and directed by Zal Batmanglij, co-writing with lead actress Brit, the pair prove that "Sound of My Voice" was not a fluke and capture the same, high end independent feel. Surrounded by impressive talent, Brit Marling is able to shine in her own creation, having a sincerity and believability to match her beauty. Ellen Page, Alexander Skarsgård, Toby Kebbell, and Patricia Clarkson round out this amazing cast, all bringing an unmatched life to their characters that keeps this film rolling. With an eerie cult-like mentality reminiscent of "Sound of My Voice" and a strong social impact demeanor, "The East" is about as strong a film as it could be and delivers one of the most entertaining films of the summer in a sea of big budget, eye-candy blockbusters.
hawkledge
Super Reviewer
September 27, 2013
Lively enough intrigue, even if the details don't all add up.
Hamee
September 29, 2013
Great story, great cast, and a wonderful conclusion. What more can you ask for from a movie about eco-terrorists with a hidden agenda?
June 13, 2013
WOW... This is one heck of a movie! I first became interested in this movie after I saw Ellen Page in Conan one night. Of course being a small independent film, it never showed around where I live. The story is great, one of the best stories that I have seen this year. And the acting is phenomenal. If this movie came out in December I would have to think we would be talking oscars. very, very highly recommended.
