The East

I was in for a treat last night when I decided to watch The East. I was in the mood for a film with social consciousness, and that is what I saw. It stars Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård, and Ellen Page. Brit Marling, the star in Another Earth, cowrote the the screen play with Zal Batmanglij, the film's director.  

Marling plays Sarah, a former FBI agent. She is now working undercover for a private intelligence firm with Patricia Clarkson (Sarah) is her handler. This organization aims to infiltrate would-be terrorist cells and dismantle them from within. The initial trick is to find the group you wish to infiltrate and the early scenes show Sarah's attempts to attract the attentions of a shadowy eco-terrorist cell known only as The East. Once accepted into their organization, she finds herself unsettled by their bonding mechanisms, designed to both test the loyalty of and strip back members' sense of self in favor of the collective. Sarah becomes involved in their actions know as 'jams.' Each of The East' jams attempts to make the world aware of corporate misdeeds such as unethical big pharmaceutical companies that produce deadly drugs to freely polluting petrochemical firms. As expected, Sarah also discovers that she is increasingly attracted to The East's charismatic leader Benji (Alexander Skarsgård) and his cause. I will say no more, but you probably have an idea of how this movie progresses.

I highly recommend this film because I found that the story, acting, and cinematography were all excellent plus it shows that the actions of some large corporations have a profound effect on our lives.