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.
Less notable is the soap-ish plot, which leans heavily on coincidence and melodrama. Woody Harrelson is as good as he’s ever been as a Seattle cop whose pregnant wife (briefly seen Charlize Theron, Townsend’s girlfriend in real life) gets caught up in the action. The other characters, however, lack credibility.
They include the activist leader played by Martin Henderson – who delivers some of the windiest political rants and is dismayed when the protests become violent – and Connie Nielsen as a TV news reporter who is improbably moved to join the protesters.
Worst is Ray Liotta as Seattle’s ineffectual mayor, a former Vietnam protester who is bullied by the governor into calling out the National Guard – and then bullied by an activist lawyer (Jennifer Carpenter) into releasing 500 jailed demonstrators.
But the crowd sequences – incorporating vintage news footage – are quite good, recalling the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention depicted in “Medium Cool.” That movie’s director, Haskell Wexler, has a cameo in “Battle in Seattle.”
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (profanity, violence). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika.