I don't want to make this a philosophical discussion on Ayn Rand. I rather talk about movie logic, and story construction. I've never read the book, and I'm not going to. It's the movie I'm reviewing and it has many problems.
The general level of production is much better than a syfy TV movie, but it's much lower than most big screen theater releases. For a $4.3M production (if IMDb is accurate), it's actually pretty impressive. I have no problems with the production or Taylor Schilling's acting. She does a good job as the driven woman executive. The problems lie elsewhere.
I don't know how hard they try to follow the book, but I think they would be better off to abandon the storypoints and keep the philosophy. It's written in the 50's by a woman who doesn't know much about business or steel. It was questionable at its time but is incredibly outdated today. I don't know why the filmmakers believe steel would sound futuristic by people today. They are talking about steel...Right? We're watching IronMan and Transformers and steel is the new material?
This is an apocalyptic world on film. There is nothing new there. Every other movie is the end of the world. But the filmmakers really need to set it up better instead of some generic oil crisis. They're trying so hard to gin everything up to recreate the Atlas Shrugged storyline that it has no relevance to today's world. Instead trying to adapt the feel of the book, I think they try to recreate the book for today. Maybe it made sense when it was written, but it makes no sense today. It makes 'Red Dawn' look realistic.
I have many other problems with the movie logic here. Let's just say I rather not get bogged down. It's not a bad production if they could make the story more logical.
