Battle in Seattle
Redwood Palms Pictures | Release Date: September 19, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 17 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
His (Townsend) staging has a tumult, a multi-POV immediacy that brings to mind Paul Greengrass' "Bloody Sunday." Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
What the film lacks in artistry it makes up for in commitment. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The result is not quite a documentary and not quite a drama, but interesting all the same. It uses the approach of Haskell Wexler's "Medium Cool" (1969), but without the same urgency. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
It's the next best thing to being there, in that it's likely to make shuddering viewers intensely glad that they weren't. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
While it makes no bones about where its sympathies lie, these fictional stories show a genuine fascination with the role politics plays on both sides of such confrontations and how things can spin out of control with no single person to blame. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJoshua Katzman
Absorbing docudrama. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Is it too much to ask that the fictional scenes have at least some of the complexity and unpredictability of the real-life theater? Read full review
60
VarietyDennis Harvey
Picture's ambition, cogency and decent performances make up for its uneven aspects. Woody Harrelson has some especially good moments as a cop. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Flapping like a scarecrow in the wind, Battle in Seattle is too frantic to make more than a transitory impression, yet too responsibly hackneyed in its characterizations to achieve pure tabloid hysteria. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen Holden
A drama is only as convincing as its characters. The people awkwardly forced together in Battle in Seattle are rhetorical mouthpieces tied to the sketchy plotlines of a so-so Hollywood ensemble movie. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
In his directing debut Battle in Seattle, actor Stuart Towns end does an impressive job (on a shoestring budget) of re-creating the massive street protests that forced the cancellation of the World Trade Organization summit in 1999. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleReyhan Harmanci
Getting an inside view on events is fascinating enough to carry the movie. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Townsend's sincerity, his admiration for the idealism of the people behind the anti-WTO protests, is never in doubt, but combining drama with historical re-creation is frankly a challenge his filmmaking skills are not up to. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The chief culprits are Townsend's TV-movie characterizations and a very muddled message. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Near the end of the movie, Django jokes that, after the protests, people may still not know what the WTO is, but "they know it's bad." That's a fair summation of how much insight Battle in Seattle provides for its viewers. Read full review
30
Washington PostJohn Anderson
It's a movie by a true believer in anti-globalization, and it may win a few converts, but not among devotees of convincing, capable cinema. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Well-intentioned but as earnest as a college freshman discovering campus politics. Read full review
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