A Dark Truth

A Dark Truth (2012)

An ambitious movie, intending more than it achieves. At stake is a critique of the corporate cornering of water rights in the Third World. This is a real problem, and deserves better than this by Hollywood, if a big movie is the way to go about it. (A far better attempt, and a far better movie, is "También la lluvia", or "Even the Rain," set in Bolivia and starring Gael García Bernal.)

The really great actor here is Forest Whitaker, who has a fairly small role as a South American rebel leader with a true conscience. The lead actor is the ever-struggling (if sincere) Andy Garcia, who is a retired South American CIA man with a quasi-political radio talk show to keep him and his troubled wife and child alive and very well.

You can smell the connection that has to be made here, between Whitaker's jungle world of righteous rebellion and Garcia's safely withdrawn world of buried political misdeeds. The third world (narratively) is the big water purification company itself, with a slightly evil corporate head and his slow-to-wake sister who finally realizes the corporation their father started is corrupt and murderous. This third leg of the triangle is complex, and a bit unconvincing with its too-easy array of killers and corporate spies and Ecuadorian accomplices all a cell phone call away.

I might make clear here the movie is not a dud but it's very troubled, both formally (editing and writing issues, mostly) and in terms of its purported content. That is, ultra-violent scenes of mass murder are used over and over again to press home how ruthless and bloody the corporate heads are, safe in their glassed offices in Toronto. (Yes, the corporation is Canadian, which I guess is a nice novelty since Canadians are so famously nice.) The actual problem of water use and clean water supplies for the villages shown is never explored. Instead we have people running and getting gunned down with weirdly nonsensical abandon. A lot.

The more you dwell on this the more you realize the movie makers are as evil as the corporate bosses they are portraying. They use this horrifying cinematic mayhem to draw you in and make you (in theory) sympathize with the rebels, and with the ordinary people who just want to live and have clean water. Well, of course! So then we get back to Garcia drawn to the jungle to single-handedly (with a revolver) save these rebels from the advancing army troops. (Yes, Andy Garcia plays the Matt Damon character here, which is really quite funny at times, and not on purpose.)

So eventually you see through all the seriousness to a pretty poorly cobbled together movie with lots of overlapping plots and some very very fast solutions to messy problems (like getting the wanted rebel leader out of Ecuador on an airplane without a blink). I'd skip this mess for lots of reasons. And go see "Even the Rain" with its much gentler flaws.

"A Dark Truth" from 2012 was coproduced by Andy Garcia and Kim Coates, and they both have lead roles, along with Debra Unger, Forest Whitaker, Eva Longoria, Kevin Durand, and Lara Daans.

We've all seen the old chestnut about the ex-secret agent, operative, art thief, bank robber, gambling cheat, etc., drawn back into one more situation. In this case, it's Jack Begosian (Garcia) who is a former CIA operative. He now has a talk show that deals with big issues.

Bruce Swinton (Coates) runs a large corporation, and the company has run into major problems in a local African community. It has caused incredible bloodshed. The company, naturally, would like to keep this quiet. His sister Morgan (Unger) is also a shareholder, and she wants to know what went on there, but her brother plays it down. She pays Begosian to go and find the eco-terrorist Francisco Francis (Whitaker) to find out.

The company bigwigs have hired someone of their own -- an assassin (Durand) who listens in on conversations Morgan and Begosian has, so that he can kill Francis when he comes to the U.S....and also Bruce's sister and Begosian.

I have no problem believing that corporations are capable of this type of thing -- in fact, they're probably doing it -- in this case, privatizing water rights in underdeveloped countries, which ultimately deprives poor people of water. In fact, I think Bectel is doing something like that now. I want to add that companies like this have probably helped a lot of countries as well, but their ultimate goal is profit. Isn't it always.

This is an excellent subject but it's hastily and sloppily told. Someone on this board said the violence wasn't gratuitous. No, it wasn't gratuitous but in some parts it was non-stop. The subject isn't gone into very deeply, and in the end, the whole thing seems simplistic.

Andy Garcia's character has a family, which is complete filler. Garcia is good but we don't find out that much about him. Forest Whitaker does a good job as Francisco, a gentle man caught in violent circumstances. Eva Longoria plays his wife. It's a small role but she's fine.

I believe Garcia and Coates wanted to tell an important story here - unfortunately, since it only made $5,000, I doubt very many people saw it. Until a "Blood Diamond" or "Syriana" type, expensive film is made about water rights, it's not going to get the right sort of attention.

Ultimately it all leaves one depressed and discouraged. There is so much corruption everywhere. How sad that we can't all treat one another like human beings.

Talk about convoluted, slow, plodding, boring to tears, predictable, and a complete waste of time...then you're talking about "A dark truth". I was hoping there were some redeeming values or at else something I could say positive about this movie, and I'm hard pressed to come up with anything. I guess one good thing was it lasted less than 2 hours, does that count? I'm often amazed why decent actors and actresses take on roles in movies like this where the scripts are so weak, the story is boring, and the writing is pathetic junk, I guess it must be for the love of money because there could be no other reason for a decent actor to be in this one. This movie makes two in row for Eva Longoria, her retched performance in "The Baytown Outlaws" along with this masterful crafted acting job puts her in the truly "Desperate housewife" needs money category. I guess maybe she really can't act and is just another pretty face in Hollywood, judging by the roles she accepts "desperate" defines her career. One last thing for you to consider, the dialog in this movie is nothing less than ridiculous, and it's like the director told the actors to deliver their lines in slow motion. That may seem like a silly comment until you actually try to watch this film, I guarantee you'll know what I mean after trying to view this sleep induced attempt.

This is the first I've seen of movies on the particular subject of what major international corporations such as Bectel are doing to underdeveloped countries as regards their water. Well done treatment, great cast, excellent acting. No hamming or sensationalism, no gratuitous violence (not that there isn't enough to tell the story). Perhaps other reviewers don't consider water as exciting as blood diamonds or oil or uranium. Perhaps it's not. But it's certainly more important. This fictional presentation of the issue is a good start toward expanding popular awareness of one of the biggest problems facing us in this new century.

Not water shortages, critical though they are. Rather, soulless, nationless corporate greed. Seven out of ten.

I generally agree with other reviews of this film in terms of weak writing and lugubrious direction. I am rating it higher primarily because it actually has real actors in the cast, hence you can watch it without having a gag-reflex. Also, the cinematography was better than average in this genre.

While there was nothing original in the plot structure, the moral ambiguity expressed through several key characters was somewhat refreshing...though, not fully resolved.

Sadly, the fine actor, Andy Garcia, is not properly exploited in this film. He comes across less than fully dimensional. The director went to a gold mine and barely got silver.

In the end, not a waste of the viewer's time, but more an appetizer than an entrée.