THE GREEN CHAIN (Mark Leiren-?Young). 90 minutes. Opens Friday (June 19). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: N
Please stop. Just stop making bad eco-movies and face the fact that good intentions don’t necessarily foster good art.
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In The Green Chain, six players in the battle over our forests deliver monologues, all of them beginning with the words “I love trees,” to a faux documentary filmmaker.
The logger (Scott McNeil) wonders how he can make a living, the protester (Babs Chula) worries about the planet, the TV star (Tricia Helfer) complains about having to shill for the eco movement when she knows almost nothing about it…. Ho-hum.
The monologues are repetitive and all at least five minutes too long, most of them shot so far away from their subjects that you can barely see their faces. And their content is so predictable, you can almost mouth the words along with the speakers.
The shots of clear-cut devastation between speeches and the opening sequence showing a tree being cut down are powerful. But the rest of the movie – 99.9 per cent of it – is totally snooze-worthy.
