Dreadfully earnest about its politics in the manner of John Sayles at his preachiest, the indie historical thriller "No God, No Master" draws a line from the civil unrest of 1920s anti-immigrant America to today's terror-besotted society that's so obvious, a freshman napping in social studies class couldn't miss it.
Writer-director Terry Green packs his tale of exploding bombs, striking workers, anarchist cells and overreacting U.S. authorities with so many crisscrossing historical figures — union-busting John D. Rockefeller, crackdown specialist J. Edgar Hoover, Industrial Workers of the World leader Carlo Tresca, even anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti — that it begins to play like an especially long dramatic reenactment for a PBS documentary.
Which is a shame, because Green shows visual flair and has a pair of central protagonists (again, real-life) whose differing attitudes toward civil liberties merit a more focused dramatic two-hander: investigator and radicals expert William Flynn, an immigrant-sympathetic lawman played with moral gravitas by David Strathairn, and his boss, Atty. Gen. Mitchell Palmer (
So much blandly sweeping, speechifying history and so little personalized dramatic focus turn "No God, No Master" into a series of issue-driven snapshots instead of something genuinely illuminating.
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"No God, No Master"
MPAA rating: none
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Playing: At Downtown Independent, Los Angeles