Who is John Galt? Tune in next time. ATLAS SHRUGGED: PART I (2011)

For obvious reasons, I've never read any work by Ayn Rand, short of a few snippets in philosophy class which were enough to give me an idea of her outlook on life.  Her philosophy begins with the postulation that no human being ever acts in anything but his or her own interest.  It ends with the embrace of every awful conservative laissez-faire economic policy known to man.  So many prominent conservatives are avid worshipers of Rand's work that even one current Republican Presidential nominee named his son after her.  You know which one.

Now along comes Atlas Shrugged: Part I, a labor of love (and not much else) from conservative businessman John Aglialoro.  Mr. Aglialoro, a lover of Rand's work, inherited the project from Albert S. Ruddy, who had tried to get a film of Atlas Shrugged made for over twenty years.  In the early 21st century it looked like it was going to happen, with a screenplay by James V. Hart (Contact) and Randall Wallace (Braveheart) and stars as huge as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie... but it never took off.

Not only did it leave Aglialoro at square one, but his clock was running out.  His rights to the novel were set to expire on June 15, 2010, if he did not make a movie from it.  So he rushed Part I into production, began principal photography on June 13, 2010, and shot it in five weeks for $10 million.  The cast are mostly no-names with their credits mainly in television.  The director, Stephen Polk, quit nine days before filming was to begin, and was replaced by the actor Paul Johansson.

This is not the first time a movie was rushed into production for a rights extension.  In 1994, producer Bernd Eichinger shot a $1 million Fantastic Four movie that was never intended for release, in order to keep the rights from expiring.  He later produced the higher-budgeted 2005 Fantastic 4, which was a financial success.  The point, I suppose, is that Aglialoro will get the chance to do the same someday, and that Atlas Shrugged: Part I is just buying him time until he can do it right.

But considering that it's essentially an abandoned child, Atlas Shrugged--and I hope my political compatriots will forgive me for this admission--is not a bad film.  Like The Fantastic Four before it, it has a certain charm.  It's an endearingly pedestrian film version of a gargantuan novel, like the old gang decided to open up the barn and put on "Hamlet." At a time when many big-studio, big-money films are dead on arrival, here is a movie that was essentially put to death but remains alive, with an engaging story and surprisingly decent acting.

The politics, of course, are abhorrent.  The movie's premise is the ultimate straw man that is used by conservatives whenever they wish to combat the slightest regulation from the government.  The year is 2016, and the U.S. economy is in the toilet.  The poor are getting poorer, and the rich... are also getting poorer.  One poor man on the news says, "If it's bad for rich people, think of how bad it must be for us." This is only the first of many phony connections between the welfare of the rich and the welfare of the rest of the country: if the wealthy do well, everyone else naturally will prosper, right?

Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling), heiress to a transcontinental rail company, is in the process of collaborating with a steel company, run by the soap-opera-good-looking Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler), to create the nation's fastest and most economical railway system.  The trouble is that the pesky government keeps getting in the way; constant regulations stand in the way of innovation, as do shady backdoor dealings between a slimy Congressman (Michael Lerner) and Dagny's brother (Matthew Marsden).

So we know where the movie stands.  Corporations are the heroes and the government is the bad guy, and the only thing that will allow our nation to prosper again is if government just gets out of the way and lets the corporations do their thing.  With corporations contributing amply to political campaigns, and K Street still running strong, it's not easy to accept the ridiculous premise of the mighty Congress bringing down its fist on capitalism.  If only Rand had lived to see the Supreme Court decision on corporate personhood.  Oh, if only.

But never mind that the film is completely incongruous, and its premise is easily refuted, and its sociopolitical ideas are horrifying.  With this work, Rand appears to aspire to be the John le Carre of the corporate world.  Only the intrigue isn't in globetrotting espionage; it's in mergers and acquisitions.  The CEO is the James Bond of the future!  Does it work?  Well, not always, but you can give them points for trying.  At the very most, Atlas Shrugged is a brisk piece of corporate soap-opera fluff.

Schilling is tenacious as the unbeatable Ms. Taggart; she has only a small filmography thus far, but she likely has a future.  Bowler is not called to be much other than a handsome block of wood, but he does that well.  There's nice supporting work from Marsden and Lerner, as well as from Patrick Fischler (recognizable as the man in the diner with the dream, from Mulholland Dr.).  As Dagny's personal assistant, Edi Gathegi is wasted (I read that his role is bigger in the novel).

Aglialoro has stated that although Part II is scheduled to begin shooting in early 2012, he will not continue if the first film is not financially successful.  The story told by Atlas Shrugged: Part I is that of a noble rich heiress and how her innovation needs to be cultivated so the rest of us poor schlubs can survive.  The story behind Atlas Shrugged: Part I is that of a rich man who, in danger of losing his decades-old project, sliced off $10 million to fund a throwaway production which in turn was given life by a bunch of working-class TV actors and a working-class TV director.  And if you do not see the irony there, you are probably an Ayn Rand reader.

** out of ****