bowmanblue I watched the trailer for this and thought 'Hey, that looks like a reasonable film.' It's about an ex CIA agent who's hired to look into an illegal massacre in a South American country, which may or may not have been carried out on the orders of a large conglomerate. It has Andy Garcia and Forest Whitaker in it (both well capable of putting in good performances), so it seemed to have a lot going for it.However, it was one of the most run-of-the-mill films I've ever watched. Not only did the trailer address every plot point along the way, but there was nothing vaguely different enough about it to make it stand out.It has a message - one that smacks you in the face as if it was Avatar promoting 'save the trees' - only this time it's about how big businesses rampage all over the world, not caring who they trample on along the way.A Dark Truth isn't a bad film in any way, it just has absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to mention. It's just over an hour and a half long. If you decide to invest that much time in it, you probably won't think you've totally wasted your time. Alternatively, you could always look up the trailer online and watch the same film in a fraction of the time.

secondtake 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the connection that has to be made here, between Whitaker's jungle world of righteous rebellion and Garcia's safely withdrawn world of buried political misdeeds.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.

cyorktoo I enjoy a well-written, well-directed and well-acted movie. This is one.It takes us into a world that we are estranged much too often and it does it with grace and passion.Unfortunately, its lack of distribution and acknowledgment of its kind, speaks volumes for the world we live in.I gave it a ten and wonder why such good movies get such poor reviews and little distribution. Where are the small movie houses that were willing to show films of quality and substance? Now we have corporations, computers and data showing the safest and most agreeable propaganda.

kosmasp The casting of the movie is incredible. Which is always the case when a message is being delivered. It's not too much on the nose here or at least it is incorporated into the story quite good. The actors you know do what they can. Eva Longoria might have the least to do (especially considering her name/weight). It's nice seeing some old familiar faces in a movie, where they try to build character.There is quite a bit of cliché in this, but you wouldn't/couldn't expect otherwise. Kevin Durand has a great little role in it and he makes his decision, no matter how small or big they are, actually work. Apart from that it's mostly the Andy Garcia show, with some added drama by Kara Unger and Forrest Whitacker. A nice little drama, with a lot of action in it.