This is a period piece movie from the early 1920’s where the
merging storylines of history seem like a compelling subject for modern
audiences, as the nation was coming to grips with mail bombs landing on the
doorstep of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, and banker J.P. Morgan, also other prominent
politicians, businessmen, and law enforcement officials in the summer of
1919. In an era that existed before the
formation of the FBI, Bureau of Investigation Agent William Flynn, played by
the inimitable David Strathairn, is the department’s best bomb expert, where
he’s assigned the task to sort out what lies behind these malicious
attacks. Inspired by true events, one
would think the parallels to the contemporary War on Terrorism might be
appropriate, as the film documents the earliest acts of terrorism to ever take
place on American soil. Shot entirely on
the streets of Milwaukee, the film has an authentic feel, with Chicago theater
well represented by Steppenwolf Theatre cast member Mariann Mayberry as firebrand
anarchist publisher Emma Goldman, the founder of Mother Earth magazine, home to radical
activists and literary free thinkers, while Remy Bumppo Theatre member David
Darlow plays the imperial John D. Rockefeller, perhaps the richest man in
America at the time, and one of the targets of the mail bombs. While well-intentioned, the director is simply
overwhelmed by the complexity of the intersecting storylines, which are
presented in a traditional, straightforward manner, lacking any sense of
originality, depth, or cinematic artistry, giving it the feel of a fairly
conventional made-for TV movie. Unfortunately,
modern era audiences would do well to revisit this period in American history,
though this film, and Clint Eastwood’s recent portrait of J. Edgar
(2011), are not the places to start. A
much better film would be the well-researched documentary film Sacco and Vanzetti (2006) made by longtime Ken Burns collaborator Peter Miller, which
does an excellent job exploring the witch hunt hysteria of rampant racism and
xenophobia of the First Red Scare of 1919-20.
Besides a police procedural following the detective work of
Flynn and his partner Ravarini (Sam Witwer), where they answer to the Attorney
General Mitchell Palmer, Ray Wise (famous for being the father of Laura Palmer
in the early 90’s TV show Twin Peaks),
his right-hand man is J. Edgar Hoover (Sean McNall), who is compiling a list of
names from radical leftist, anarchist, and immigrant groups who are considered
a threat to the nation’s security, as they are alleged to belong to groups that
advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Accordingly, they are targeting labor activists and anarchists who are
seen as agitators of social unrest.
While it’s often confusing to tell the difference between supporters of
the early labor movement, who are fighting for a decent wage and safer working
conditions, and anarchists or communists who oppose the prevailing order hoping
to inspire a revolution, following the example of the Russian Revolution of 1917, many ordinary
workers are caught in the crossfire, where the Justice Department charges
Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, basically two lifelong laborers, with
the murder of payroll clerks, where they are both convicted during the frenzy of
anti-immigrant fervor, where the two were executed largely for refusing to
disavow their political beliefs. While this
is going on, Flynn is also caught up in a romantic relationship with the single
mother living across the hall, the widow of his former partner who was killed
by an explosive devise, and her angry son who is sneaking out of the house and
identifying with the violent rhetoric of the anarchists. Even as Flynn tracks down the bomb factory and
identifies the source of the mail bombs, Palmer is more interested in his ambitious
plan to deport thousands of immigrants, many of whom are guilty of nothing more
than being an immigrant, yet they are used as pawns in the frustrated efforts
of U.S. government officials to eradicate terrorism from within their
ranks.
The American origins of the film title come from an
anarchist and labor slogan that first appeared at the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, where
pamphlets and banners held aloft by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
contained this message, though it originated earlier with Nietzsche’s 1886
book, Beyond Good and Evil, and was
later printed by Margaret Sanger in a feminist pamphlet a few years later
promoting contraception, insisting that women are masters of their own
bodies. Given short shrift here is the Women's suffrage in the United
States, where many women were part of the anarchist movement, not just Emma
Goldman, as advocating for the right to vote was a radical social change
requiring protests and demonstrations, where women were subject to arrests and
many were jailed in their quest to pass the Nineteenth
Amendment in 1920. Instead the film
pits immigrant groups one against the other, mostly Italians and the Irish,
where the Irish have the jobs and the political power that the Italians came to
American searching for. Early in 1920,
the Justice Department launches a series of raids against immigrants and labor
organizations, known as the Palmer Raids, where over 3000 are arrested and subject
to deportation, where the arrests are without search warrants and the detention
stations are in overcrowded, unsanitary facilities. In their zeal to create a public image of
decisive action, the agents arrest everyone attending organization meeting
halls, including visitors and even American citizens, and while they claimed to
take possession of several bombs, in fact the sum total of all the raids netted
four ordinary pistols. Eventually a
District Court Judge orders the arrests illegal and unconstitutional, but not
until after they stir the nation into a frenzy of anti-immigrant
sentiment. It is under this historical backdrop
that the movie unravels, where the failings of this film are much like Lee
Daniels' The Butler (2013), where storylines unravel through a backdrop of
history, both feeling shortchanged, coming off as one-dimensional, where the
director ends up thoroughly manipulating the audience with a series of contrived
events, using a deeply swelling musical score to garner sympathy for the ugly
injustice of it all. The brief Black and
White opening that resembles archival footage stands apart from the rest of the
film, never really making a connection, yet the stark reality sets a tone that
quickly gets lost in the build-up of orchestrated outrage.
