If the 1% went on strike, would anyone notice? Objectivists think yes, and belched out this overlong, punishing mess of a movie to prove it. Focusing exclusively on a group of privileged CEOs, it then goes on to present these individuals as the most oppressed and misunderstood people in America, hemmed in on every side by vandals and parasites who have the absolute front to suggest that maybe they could stand to be slightly less rich and spend slightly more time thinking about anything other than lining their own pockets.There is the potential for an interesting story to be told in the economically devastated world of 'Atlas Shrugged': this is quite categorically not that story. The movie details heroine Dagny Taggart's valiant struggle to continue living in an opulent, insulated bubble in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. In a world where CEOs are supposedly as instantly recognizable - and idolized likewise - as musicians or movie stars, Dagny and and her fellow one-percenters are presented as heroic, misunderstood outsiders, who are being unfairly deprived of their right to make as much money as they want by a malevolent Government insisting they take other people's rights into account at the same time. The heroes are smug, pompous and unlikable; their Government opponents are straw men who can't open their mouths without sinister music swelling behind every word. A betrayed wife is presented as entirely unreasonable for taking exception to her Objectivist husband cheating on her with the heroine. A government official is lambasted for his dedication to a job that doesn't involve the profit motive. The heroes and heroines of Atlas Shrugged may be good Objectivists, but their colossal and oblivious selfishness makes it very hard for the uninitiated to find them at all sympathetic.Setting aside Objectivist philosophy - which here comes across as self- contradictory where it isn't entirely incoherent - and the obvious failure to update the book's 1950s mores to its modern setting, the movie, quite simply, isn't very good. It's a talky, tedious yawn-fest with an overbearing score, endless talking-head info-dumps delivered via newscast and and over-reliance on cheap and obvious CGI. Scene after scene is taken up by people in suits walking into rooms to exchange clunky, leaden dialog with other people in suits (more music swelling here, this time noble and heroic as our protagonists expound on their greed-is-good philosophy). A scene of a man placing documents on the hero's desk is accompanied by the same ominous chords that would usually accompany a looming spaceship menacing downtown LA. Other scenes are stopped dead in their tracks so that characters can argue about Randian economics in front of roomfuls of stunned party-goers. It's extremely telling that, when the movie attempts to humanize an impending disaster involving hundreds, it focuses on a wealthy, arrogant businessman and his much younger trophy wife rather than anybody a general audience might find more immediately sympathetic.It's impossible to imagine even the film's target audience of Objectivists extracting much enjoyment from Atlas Shrugged: The Strike. Even the choir it's preaching to will be bored by this cheap, turgid mess. If you already like Atlas Shrugged, you're better off rereading the book than sitting through this travesty; if you don't, you'll come away no wiser as to why the book has the following it does. Either way, your time is much better spent elsewhere.

I haven't read the book so can't comment on it, but the story in the movie is so original and so important that I just loved it. I saw part one but honestly couldn't remember if they had changed the actors in part two or not, since none of them were well-known. The acting seemed fine. The movie looked like a medium budget movie. The special effects weren't great and some of the scenes weren't as large-scale as they could have been, like the steel mill, the protesters, etc... But all that was fine because the movie was great. I'd imagine conservatives would like it and liberals would hate it. It's great to see a glimpse of where we're headed when the government goes overboard with talk of fairness and equality. It leads to everyone being equally poor.

Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book. I read it about once every 3 years. It is a beautiful study on culture, government, society, business, and economy. It's almost elegant how Ayn Rand describes the characters so clearly that you feel like you know them. These actors (if you could call them that)fall very short of the protagonists you picture while reading the book. Henry Rearden comes across as a crooked cop rather than a genius metallurgist. EVERY SINGLE ACTOR is different from Part I. Despite the fact that there are more recognizable actors in this movie, the acting is still record breakingly bad. I seriously performed more convincingly in my HS rendition of "Little Women" when I was 15. This is not a book that should ever have been made into a movie. It's too big for film. Atlas Shrugged, the book, is number two on the Library of Congress' list of most influential books, second only to THE BIBLE. Seriously, THE BIBLE. It's a book that should only be in the imagination of the reader. Otherwise...it's sadly downgraded to a low budget, no name, nothing special film. Ayn Rand would be so ashamed of what has become of her greatest work. Please read the book to fully understand this masterpiece!

Usually a movie proposes a story, one that can be connected somehow to reality or tries to resemble an alternate world with a reasonable degree of logic in comparison to our reality. Even where and how different beings and species mirror us in someway.I found this movie to be poorly written in many aspects. Its condescending, instead of proposing a scenario, it accepts some beliefs as true and indisputable. Overall it seems this came from a quite shallow mindset.As a foreigner you grow up believing in the success the U.S. is both as a nation and country. Its might and power is such that it is under a glass veil and is constantly criticized for what it does or doesn't do. Its people and citizens are expected to be just as such successful.It is disappointing to learn that the foremost critics of the U.S. and the ones that appear to hate its institutions are really the U.S. citizens themselves. They strive to perform a more perfect nation, yet they despise their government. They want to be above all else but many are wary of themselves. Many think that there is a hidden agenda somewhere against them. I think this movie supports those ideas. I think it was a horrible product. I can't recommend this movie to anyone. Acting level is par with a midnight television show on a secondary network. The worse part of this movie is that it assumes the viewer has the same opinion as that of the script's writer. This is a like a preaching from a cult. It misses a lot, a whole lot.