The East

I saw a lot of movies at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. I had planned in advance to catch Brit Marling's new film 'The East,' just from reading the synopsis before the festival started. I really liked Marling's 'Another Earth,' and was eager to see what she was going to do next. The idea of a domestic eco-terrorist group punishing the ultra-elite was somewhat interesting to me. Vigilante justice is something that, if done well, can usually make for a compelling story. Marling, and co-writer/director Zal Batmanglij, effectively create a well-paced thriller. Though, the ending doesn't really hold the weight of what came before.

Sarah (Marling) is an undercover agent working for a large security firm. She's been tasked with infiltrating a newly formed, and highly dangerous domestic terrorism group calling themselves The East. The group has threatened to punish big company CEOs that they deem guilty of running their businesses without thought of people or the environment. Some people might be rolling their eyes right now thinking, "Oh no, another preachy environmental movie." First off, why can't a movie be preachy? The filmmakers have personal biases, just like the rest of us, and are free to express them within their chosen medium. Second, 'The East' isn't as in-your-face preachy as you might think. At least not until the end, but that's another argument altogether.

After Sarah lies to her husband about her assignment, she heads into the American heartland hoping to track down the group. She hops trains, dumpster dives, and spends sleepless nights on the streets hoping to hook up with someone from the group, or someone that knows someone from the group. She meets up with a member of The East rather quickly, which is pretty unbelievable considering the needle-in-a-haystack way she was looking for the group, but it had to happen soon so the story could move along.

The leader of The East is Benji (Alexander Skarsgard). He's an enigmatic man who looks like Charles Manson, and acts like Gandhi. The super-secretive group reluctantly lets Sarah into their fold. Benji doesn't see her as a threat. He recruits her for one of their missions. Izzy (Ellen Page) isn't as accepting. She's there to give Sarah the stink-eye every time they cross paths.

What 'The East' does extremely well is build tension. We don't know if Sarah is going to get found out. We don't know if Sarah is going to start relating to the group and their causes. We don't know much, but the way Marling and Batmanglij have laid the story out has created an effective thriller on quite a few levels. Not to mention they've created an independent espionage thriller that looks like a big-budget Hollywood film. Never at any point do you feel like you're watching a low-budget festival film.

Decent performances pepper the picture. Skarsgard commendably switches his character's tone once he shaves off the beard. He goes from tree-hugging bearded hipster to dashing terrorist mastermind in a few seconds. Marling has the strong, yet vulnerable damsel in distress thing down. Page is effortlessly bitchy.

While the movie works its way through its story of corporate espionage with exactitude, the ending is rather disingenuous to the steam the screenplay had built up along the way. It's unbelievable at best. The prologue of snapshots taken of Sarah during the credits (to say what she's doing in them would be a spoiler) are, suffice it to say, completely ridiculous. The change in Sarah's character never really seems genuine, but the movie desperately wants us to think it is. That's the real problem with 'The East.' It spends all this time setting up this story, and this strong-willed character, and then sort of cops out with a mediocre implausible ending.

Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

This 20th Century Fox release comes in a standard Blu-ray keepcase. It's a single-disc release on a 50GB Blu-ray. Inside of the case is an insert with a code for an UltraViolet Digital Copy.