The East

Directed by Zal Batmanglij

(PG-13)

***

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The East might be the prototype for a new breed of espionage thriller, said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. It has a female in the role of “the Bourne/Bond–style hero” and sends her into the field as the paid agent of a private firm whose business is protecting powerful corporations from trouble. As star Brit Marling goes undercover to infiltrate an anarchist collective, the script lets neither the radicals nor their profit-hungry foes off easy—until its balanced approach finally collapses and the idealists rule the day. Marling co-wrote the screenplay with the director, but it’s still hard to watch such a gifted actress “tying herself up in a story that’s essentially a glib preachment to the anti-corporate choir,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Actually, the film could have used “a clearer and more passionate point of view,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgard help make the radicals’ path appear seductive enough that we understand the mole’s moral confusion, but the screenplay steers toward a middle-of-the-road politics that doesn’t feel right for the story.