Starring: Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, Colm Feore
A Canadian film dipping into the well of Canadian talent, The Trotsky employs the upstart Jay Baruchel as Leon Bronstein, a child of privelege, who decides he is the reincartnation of Leon Trotsky (whose last name was, incidentally, originally Bronstein). He beings by rebelling against his father's own company and then when he moves to a public school, moves to form a union giving the students a voice. In his journey, he encounters a powerful pricipal and his sidekick, meets an older woman he assumes must be his wife-to-be (as she has the name and approximate age difference as Trotsky's wife) and a group of students who he has to get on his side.
The movie centres around the struggle between apathy and boredom amongst teenagers. Bronstein believes they are apathetic and just need provoking and the principal believes they just don't care. Using the Trotsky plotline as a vehicle for this is an interesting idea, but carrying the two plots at times proves too much an undertaking and each story suffers a bit as a result. The love plot develops too quickly and is frankly a little hard to fathom (17/27 is a strange age gap no matter which gender is in which role). Not to say it wasn't interesting, I learned a bit about Trotsky along the way and enjoyed how the character felt the need to force the pieces into place. It just felt like each piece had to be hurried along to fit it into the span of the movie.
Without Baruchel, who I personally feel is proving he can hold his own as a strong supporting actor and the occasional lead role, and Feore, whose veteran acting presence is felt in anything he does; this movie would certainly not rise above the status of made-for-tv. However, they made it a viable movie and filled the holes in the plotline enough for me to give it a 6.75/10. I feel like a 7/10 is approaching 'great' and it's just not quite there, but close.
No comments:
Post a Comment