Pardon me boy, is this the capitalist choo-choo? Yes, but if “Birth of a Nation” was supposedly “history written with lightning,” “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” is political economy written with crayon.
Made despite the free market’s ruling that the first episode was a dud, this would-be “Empire Strikes Back” of Ayn Rand Objectivism instead proceeds like a month in a federal penitentiary with a talkative dingbat for a cellie.
We reboot with a much worse director (John Putch) and a whole new slate of actors. So instead of the untalented but at least icy-bitchy Taylor Schilling in the lead as glamorous railway maverick Dagny Taggart, meet Samantha Mathis, who lacks enough sparkle to play the tired mom in the Tide commercial. Her hunky opposite number, steel chieftain Hank Rearden, who invented a new super-metal and refuses to sell it to the government, is played by Jason Beghe, who has a face like a cinderblock and a voice like a DustBuster.
When a Socialist government of a nightmare future ($40-a-gallon gas, we’re told, but that’s it for the dystopian imagery except for a half-dozen grubby extras waving signs on sidewalks) hauls Rearden into court for flouting the law and bragging about it, the judges let him walk. Because they’re so intimidated by the manly awesomeness of his capitalist rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the nation’s best and brightest are disappearing in the name of someone called John Galt, but since that happened in Part I, we really don’t need another hour of mysterious vanishing.
Things don’t seem so bad for the rich, who keep threatening to take their genius and run instead of seeking political change. They scheme in their satin sheets and swill martinis in the kind of gold-flake and red-velvet restaurants Donald Trump would call “classy.” But the real problem is seen in those candy-assed judges. Ayn Rand hates government so blindly, she can’t decide whether bureaucrats are supermonsters or just greasy little zits on the face of History.
The government makes a big push toward Communism, but not in the time-tested method (hint: Against protests, mass executions generally work well). Instead, bureaucrats ask the makers to sign away their rights. With (I’m not making this up) “gift certificates.” Like at Baskin-Robbins? Rearden refuses, and the bureaucrats are flummoxed. So instead of calling in the torture toys, they resort to a cheesy blackmail scam, presenting photos of Rearden with Dagny, whom everyone knows he’s bonking anyway.
I’d love to see Socialism given a cinematic ultra-wedgie, and I’ve read (almost one-eighth of) Rand’s book. But even if you overlooked the production values from a 1986 porno and special effects like something your nephew cooked up on his Mac, the movie’s “Yay, money!” zingers are just a big bag of sad. Instead of conversing, everyone declaims. Bad guys blanch as good guys shout, “The government takes what they want and taxes what they leave behind” (yeah, and people usually vote for that system) or, “You did this, you and your government . . . creeps!” You tell ’em, Dags. Can’t wait to see who plays you in Part III.