A Dark Truth

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Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller
• Release Date: 2013-01-11 NY/LA
• Running Time: 106 min.
• Director: Damian Lee
• Cast: Kevin Durand, Devon Bostick, Forest Whitaker, Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria, Kim Coates, Deborah Kara Unger, Steven Bauer, Al Sapienza, Lara Daans
• Producers: Kim Coates, Andy Garcia, Jeff Sackman
• Writer: Damian Lee
• Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
• Official Site: A Dark Truth Official Site

Groping for the levers of outrage is an OK way to establish a narrative rapport with an audience, and giant and amoral corporations can provide a good fulcrum for hoisting all that righteous indignation, unless you're Ayn Rand or FreedomWorks or something. A Dark Truth, written and directed by Damian Lee, finds its locus in the real but mostly underreported phenomenon of corporate seizures of public water rights. Andy Garcia is talk radio DJ Jack Begosian, a former CIA agent haunted by his dark past, the lingering guilt of professional sins, etc. A high-level whistle-blower (Deborah Kara Unger) enlists him to go into the Ecuadorian jungle to rescue freedom fighter and corporate bête noire Francisco Francis (Forest Whitaker) from corrupt army factions. The aspiration here seems to be to the kind of sprawling, socially conscious narrative Steven Soderbergh unspooled in Traffic, but the movie keeps getting distracted with cliché boardroom conspiracies, Begosian's boring marriage, and his pompous talk radio broadcasts. Lee's generative idea about the corporate seizure of basic resources is pretty great, but the narrative never finds a visual or temporal pace. The film's heart is in the right place, but there's not a brain in its pretty little head.