I watched this on video last night. It wasn't even a blip in the movie schedule in Japan, although "Bowling for Columbine" was in most theaters when it came out. There are obvious reasons for the lack of attention "Liberty Stands Still" received.
Some spoilers follow.
First, it was tedious. The drawn out disclosure of why Joe is doing this is supposed to be intriguing, but there is no tension to sustain the intrigue. Ironically, the realism of the offhand way he kills a few of the victims works against the drama of the movie by releasing some of the tension without a buildup to that release. There is another source of tension in the bombs, but since we never actually get to know Russel that well, we don't really care too much about him. He's been committing adultery with someone else's wife, so most people wouldn't have that much sympathy with him from a moral standpoint anyway. The other potential victims of the bombs are either people Skogland portrays unsympathetically or a faceless crowd. It makes it hard to care about whether the bombs go off or not.
That leads to another problem with the plot: there are no sympathetic characters. Again, this complexity is one of the things that works against it as a movie. Even Liberty, who is in the role of Joe's main victim, is shown to be unsympathetic at the beginning (she's cheating on her husband, she's indirectly responsible for gun running and so is supposedly aiding and abetting wars at home and abroad) yet we are somehow supposed to grow to like her at least a little bit by the end of the film. The only admirable things about her were that she tried to find a way out of her predicament, and kept trying to help others even if she was putting herself in danger.
A final major flaw was that the ending was anti-climactic. Obviously Kari Skogland could not make her villain into a demon without undermining her message, so some of Joe's threats are bluffs. He is made to appear serious by killing people earlier in the film, but the people he kills are people that no one could really care about--in many cases we don't know them well enough--or could not support without some ambiguity.
This movie's blatantly obvious message is anti-gun. Unfortunately Skogland displays a very poor understanding of the complexities involved in the question of gun-control. Joe states that the gun industry is huge, while in reality most manufacturers function barely in the black. Profits for the entire firearms industry in 1999 amounted to about $200 million. The CEO of a major corporation makes a median salary of $13 to $14 million and the highest paid make around $180 to $190 million. That's the amount that a single employee of the company makes versus the profits of an entire industry. Making guns is hardly the most profitable of businesses.
The line of reasoning that Joe follows is tenuous at best. By his logic, car manufacturers should be held responsible for the accidents they cause, drug manufacturers responsible for deaths from side effects, accidental overdoses, and suicides; and the power company for deaths through electrocution. I fully agree with one of Joe's statements, that Americans have forgotten about responsibility. Where he and I disagree is that I would not hold the manufacturer of a hammer responsible for a murder committed using the hammer; I would blame the murderer. In addition, we never find out for sure if the death he lays at Liberty's feet was intentional or accidental. He seems to think that issue is not worth considering and this allows him to skirt the issue of personal responsibility in his quest for "justice." While his blindness to the complexities of the situation could be seen as Skogland's presentation of a flawed narrator, given the overall treatment of the film it is likely that the overt message and tortured logic are the writer's own, not just the character's.
While this movie had some potential, it falls flat in many areas. The logic of the plot is forced, the characters are not developed to their full potential, and some of the virtues it does have are undermined by mistakes in pacing. If the promised complexity and ambiguity of the characters had been more fully developed, if the logic and facts of the plot had been more believable, if Skogland had built the dramatic tension in a more adept way, this could have been a better than average movie.
If you want to watch good movie about the issue of gun control, rent "Bowling for Columbine." You may not agree with Moore's message, but if you actually think about what he is saying, you have to admit that he raises some legitimate points. His approach is to ask questions to find the root causes of the problem. Moore raises more questions than he answers and by doing so invites the viewer to help find a solution for the very real problems to which he draws attention. It's not drama, but it is a decent treatment of the central issue in "Liberty Stands Still."
Some spoilers follow.
First, it was tedious. The drawn out disclosure of why Joe is doing this is supposed to be intriguing, but there is no tension to sustain the intrigue. Ironically, the realism of the offhand way he kills a few of the victims works against the drama of the movie by releasing some of the tension without a buildup to that release. There is another source of tension in the bombs, but since we never actually get to know Russel that well, we don't really care too much about him. He's been committing adultery with someone else's wife, so most people wouldn't have that much sympathy with him from a moral standpoint anyway. The other potential victims of the bombs are either people Skogland portrays unsympathetically or a faceless crowd. It makes it hard to care about whether the bombs go off or not.
That leads to another problem with the plot: there are no sympathetic characters. Again, this complexity is one of the things that works against it as a movie. Even Liberty, who is in the role of Joe's main victim, is shown to be unsympathetic at the beginning (she's cheating on her husband, she's indirectly responsible for gun running and so is supposedly aiding and abetting wars at home and abroad) yet we are somehow supposed to grow to like her at least a little bit by the end of the film. The only admirable things about her were that she tried to find a way out of her predicament, and kept trying to help others even if she was putting herself in danger.
A final major flaw was that the ending was anti-climactic. Obviously Kari Skogland could not make her villain into a demon without undermining her message, so some of Joe's threats are bluffs. He is made to appear serious by killing people earlier in the film, but the people he kills are people that no one could really care about--in many cases we don't know them well enough--or could not support without some ambiguity.
This movie's blatantly obvious message is anti-gun. Unfortunately Skogland displays a very poor understanding of the complexities involved in the question of gun-control. Joe states that the gun industry is huge, while in reality most manufacturers function barely in the black. Profits for the entire firearms industry in 1999 amounted to about $200 million. The CEO of a major corporation makes a median salary of $13 to $14 million and the highest paid make around $180 to $190 million. That's the amount that a single employee of the company makes versus the profits of an entire industry. Making guns is hardly the most profitable of businesses.
The line of reasoning that Joe follows is tenuous at best. By his logic, car manufacturers should be held responsible for the accidents they cause, drug manufacturers responsible for deaths from side effects, accidental overdoses, and suicides; and the power company for deaths through electrocution. I fully agree with one of Joe's statements, that Americans have forgotten about responsibility. Where he and I disagree is that I would not hold the manufacturer of a hammer responsible for a murder committed using the hammer; I would blame the murderer. In addition, we never find out for sure if the death he lays at Liberty's feet was intentional or accidental. He seems to think that issue is not worth considering and this allows him to skirt the issue of personal responsibility in his quest for "justice." While his blindness to the complexities of the situation could be seen as Skogland's presentation of a flawed narrator, given the overall treatment of the film it is likely that the overt message and tortured logic are the writer's own, not just the character's.
While this movie had some potential, it falls flat in many areas. The logic of the plot is forced, the characters are not developed to their full potential, and some of the virtues it does have are undermined by mistakes in pacing. If the promised complexity and ambiguity of the characters had been more fully developed, if the logic and facts of the plot had been more believable, if Skogland had built the dramatic tension in a more adept way, this could have been a better than average movie.
If you want to watch good movie about the issue of gun control, rent "Bowling for Columbine." You may not agree with Moore's message, but if you actually think about what he is saying, you have to admit that he raises some legitimate points. His approach is to ask questions to find the root causes of the problem. Moore raises more questions than he answers and by doing so invites the viewer to help find a solution for the very real problems to which he draws attention. It's not drama, but it is a decent treatment of the central issue in "Liberty Stands Still."