A Dark Truth (2012)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fresh and Exciting

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film deals with the age old conflict of control of natural resources. In this case an international company called Clear-Bec runs water filtration systems. It makes deals with governments to take over the waterways used by the poor indigenous population, then turn around and sell them what has been free. Old progressives are familiar with this type of thing from Susan George's "How the Other Half Dies" (1976).In this particular case, the water in an Ecuadorian village becomes polluted with sewage and leads to a typhus epidemic which wipes out a village. Part of the damage control was to have the military ensure there were no witnesses. The incident is brought to the attention of Morgan Swinton (Deborah Kara Unger) part owner of the evil corporation. She has a conscience and wants to get to the bottom of the incident against the wishes of her brother and the rest of the company.She hires radio talk show host and former CIA agent Jack Begosian (Andy Garcia) who used to work on the other side of these types of issues. For him it is a chance for redemption and to bury those demons. His goal is to bring back the only witness, an activist who has the secret files of what happened, Francisco Francis (Forest Whitaker).The film is about a fictional corporation doing things that are not beyond the realm of reason, until they bring the fight home, then I had to scratch my head. Personally I would have liked to seen a dramatization of a certain soft drink company who we all know and love and their involvement with the assassination of union leaders in Columbia.Andy Garcia and Forest Whitaker are typically animated characters in stories. In this movie they are rather subdued and defined more by their philosophical ramblings than actions. The plot was fairly simple without any real twist. The final shoot out I found grossly unbelievable. I never got to experience the pain of the affected people, nor did I develop any type connection with the main character whose past, which was fundamental to understanding him, was not fully explained. Not as good as Sean Connery in the Amazon Rain Forest.Parental Guide: No F-bombs, sex, or nudity. Killing, some blood not overly graphic.

"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.

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.

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.