The new movie based on Ayn Rand’s famous paean to laissez-faire capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, is producing strong reactions from her acolytes and detractors alike. That’s not surprising for a film based on a novel that is essentially an essay with characters and a plot.
Hedge fund manager Victor Niederhoffer, who is partial to the ideas of Ayn Rand, calls the movie a “disappointment” in a review on the libertarian website Junto (nycjunto.org). “The actors ‘speak the words’ of the novel,” he writes, “and you can get the gist that businessmen are unfairly portrayed as evil by the moochers in Washington.”
However, he won’t be recommending the film, because “viewers would have an even more stereotyped and hurtful view of the [collectivist] idea that has the world in its grip than they do now.” Ideology apart, Atlas Shrugged is no date movie, either. “The romance in the film is quite tepid,” says Niederhoffer.
