Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page wreak eco-terrorism in “The East.” (
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Let’s say you wanted to have another go at “Red Dawn” but you think more like Redford. Voilà: You’d have “The East,” a cockamamie valentine to eco-terrorism.
Brit Marling, who co-wrote and helped produce this vehicle for herself, plays Jane, a superspy for a corporate espionage outfit who is sent to infiltrate a terrorist group called the East. This anarchist collective punks corporate evildoers with a sometimes literal dose of their own medicine.
We know Jane is a thoughtless conformist zombie at the start because we catch her listening to Christian radio (though no more thought is given to Christianity than that). Still, she is blessed with miraculous good luck. She almost instantly meets a member of the East, who brings her to live with his band of hairy revolutionaries at their secret hideaway in the woods.
The leader of this guerrilla outfit, Benji (Alexander Skarsgård), is, in contrast to her doughy boyfriend back home, a slightly more perfect take on Adonis, so you can see where this is heading.
Fellow terrorists (one played by Ellen Page) fold Jane into their plot to infect the leaders of an evil pharmaceutical company with their own, poisonous drug — by sneaking it into the Champagne at a swanky party.
This drug, by the way, will within days (take your pick) cripple you, cause seizures and/or give you brain damage — yet somehow it earns billions in profits because no one but the terrorists has noticed all of this. (Shouldn’t their beef be with the FDA for approving the drug?)
Jane is dumb enough to break cover by trying to round up all the poisoned Champagne glasses in full view of her colleagues, then breaks cover again by questioning their methods, because the screenplay needs to give the terrorists an opportunity to explain their twisted reasoning.
Later, back at her corporate offices, Jane reveals she is now on the terrorists’ side by giving a lightly hilarious speech defending the East’s Dumpster-diving and punctuating her remarks by eating an apple from the nearest garbage can.
Do I have this right? Pharmaceuticals that spent 25 years in lab tests winning approval by the FDA: unsafe. But eating out of Dumpsters? Perfectly hygienic.
Marling and the movie’s director and co-writer, Zal Batmanglij, boast that they dined out of Dumpsters to prepare for this movie. I hope those who attended the premiere party took a careful look at the catering.
The combo of preposterous thriller and misguided polemic doesn’t even make sense internally. Jane’s evil corporate honcho boss (Patricia Clarkson) initially does nothing with her employee’s field reports, but even a heartless executive would see the massive criminal and civil liability in allowing an underling to participate in serious crimes.
This script is more like a series of bitter reflexes than a reasoned story; it makes “Red Dawn” look nuanced. As in that film, the East’s crew carry out guerrilla attacks, slice open a deer and yowl like wolves after a battle. But at least we never had to watch Patrick Swayze and Co. ritually bathe one another or play an excruciatingly P.C. version of Spin the Bottle (when the bottle points at someone, you say something like, “Can I give you a hug?”). Worse: The East kids turn out to be rich ingrates. One of them even went to Brown, petri dish for the specimen.
Another difference: the “Red Dawn” irregulars were fighting Communist invaders. The guerrillas in this film would have been cheering them on. It’s a shame the two groups couldn’t cross paths in the woods. But if the limo liberals from the East saw the Wolverines coming they’d just ask Father to send the Learjet over to pick them up.