natal_queen I was excited to learn a bit more about what motivates groups like the ELF, but only learned about one kids predicament. Daniel was difficult to relate to, and simply put, comes across as brat who didn't peak until he met a bunch of outcasts, and I'm not sure if going to prison is the best type of "making it" one should aspire to. As someone who is passionate about this cause, I really wanted to find something redeeming in this organization, but alas, I walked away from the film the same way I feel about groups like PETA and The Discovery Network. More so, I left not knowing what the objective of the ELF really is, instead just watched a film on a group of young brainwashed kids who act first and worry about consequences later. And when consequences do come, they complain about the harsh sentences (granted it is a bit harsh, but what again, research first before you do something you KNOW is illegal.) I didn't walk away from the film feeling sympathetic to the plight of these members nor do I feel like I got a "behind the scenes look" at the ELF. (Unless of course the ELF is comprised of self-righteous mid- thirty-year-old who still don't understand the concept of crime and punishment.) Perhaps the description should be updated as the whole film was really about Daniel and not so much about their mission of the ELF. Good soundtrack though.

evening1 There's a show on the National Geographic Channel called "Locked Up Abroad" about people who have no real goals in life and because of short-sighted acts of criminality wind up imprisoned in foreign lands.The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) members depicted here seem like stateside equivalents of these naive and myopic drifters. Taking up arms against Oregon lumber mills seems to give them a raison d'etre and a way to belong -- and consequences to the victims or themselves be damned.This film spotlights the case of Daniel McGowan, the rather desultory, 20-something son of a New York City cop who finds a calling with the ELF, which opposes things like old-growth lumbering and genetic engineering and takes to burning down some of the places it believes take part in such activities. While it surely seems wrong for the wood industry to harvest thousand-year-old timber, when a tree is felled, six more must be planted, as one trade representative explains. However, none of the activists is ever asked to comment about that, which seems one of the few glaring omissions in this largely balanced documentary. McGowan comes across as an easy-going, principled young man with an unfortunate tendency to overlook the consequences of his actions until they're splashed across TV screens on the evening news. All too belatedly, he realizes that when you torch someone else's property, all people will focus on is the mayhem you have wrought -- your lofty ideals get lost in the rubble.It's hard on McGowan's laconic father and his sympathetic and self-sacrificing sister when he finally cops a plea -- like nearly all of his fellow compatriots in crime -- although in contrast to many, McGowan declines to rat out any peer. This lands him a seven-year sentence in an Illinois prison for terrorists.The film lavishes too much time on the question of whether felons like McGowan should be considered terrorists if they scrupulously have avoided injuring or killing people. Yet, as one US official points out, you don't have to be Bonnie and Clyde to be a bank robber, nor Osama bin Laden to be a terrorist. So quiet-spoken McGowan will carry the label of terrorist for the rest of his days. This thought-provoking work is an effective argument against emotion-driven mischief-making. If you want to make a change in a democracy you'd better do so without destroying your opponents' stuff -- the Boston Tea Party notwithstanding.

Conor Maximus Great documentary showing the people who are willing to fight back against the corporations that are not only willing to destroy and pillage mother nature for profit but are happy to do so. Do I agree with their tactics? No, but am I happy there is now a new extreme fighting back against the other extreme? Yes. For too long corporations have done what they please without caring for anything but the money lining their pockets. This documentary shows the people who where willing to stand up and say enough is enough. Peaceful protests just fell on deaf ears and ended with pepper spray to the eyes and testicles. These guys had enough, they knew for a fact that their protests where not going to change anything so they had to turn it up notch. Corporations would not listen to their cries and simply didn't care so ELF decided to hit them in the only place they care about, their pockets. This documentary follows the story of one of these protesters who decided to fight back and stand up for what he thought was right. Should these people be considered terrorists? No, they should be considered arsonists. If the government defines these people as terrorists then what name should be given to the corporations who drove these people to take these actions? Again I do not condone the actions of these people but they are the lesser of two evils in this situation.

The_Film_Cricket What are the criteria for being a terrorist? What should be the criteria for a being a terrorist? Is an environmentalist who burns down the empty office of a logging company in the middle of the night comparable to crimes committed by people like Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden? Is this crime to be put on the same legal shelf as those who fly planes into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people? Ask any three people and you are likely to get three different answers, after all, the people you ask probably aren't the ones going to prison for it.Marshall Curry's documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front begins by showing us some acts of "eco-terrorism", acts in which radical environmentalists whose peaceful protests have fallen on deaf ears and turned up the heat by setting fires to lumber mills, wild horse corrals, SUV dealerships and meat packing plants. They were called The Earth Liberation Front – or E.L.F. – unorganized group of radicals willing to cause millions of dollars in property damage in the name of keeping corporate America from destroying the planet. The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to dismiss these individuals as a bunch of over-zealous ya-hoos who just enjoy watching things burn. Yet, the film is something more, as we watch it, we are taken into the lives of some of the members of the E.L.F. and begin to understand what they are fighting for. That leads to questions of whether or not their legal prosecution is really fair.The E.L.F. get the attention of, not only their targets, but the F.B.I. who quickly labels the group as "The number one domestic terrorist threat" and launches a full-scale investigation of the individuals involved, an investigation that resembles in many ways the F.B.I.'s investigation of the mafia 50 years ago.What is interesting is that even while we don't agree with what the E.L.F. is doing, the film gives us images that allow us to understand their point of view. We see footage of trees that have stood for thousands of years, blindly cut down. We see horse mills, with hundreds of dead horses hung from the ceiling. We see the heartbreaking sight of a group of legendary trees sawed down to make a parking lot.We see the protesters themselves, camped out in the trees that are to be cut down, beaten and maced unmercifully by the local police. In a scene that resembles the riots of the 1960s, we see members of the E.L.F. with their faces covered marching into the streets and then beaten and clubbed. The irony is that the members of the group who are clearly guilty of vandalism haven't done any physical harm to other human beings but are being beaten down by law enforcement as if they were murderers.Let us make no mistake, what the E.L.F doing is wrong, unlawful and is deserving a punishment by law, and yes, jail time. The point is that this film questions the severity of the extent of that punishment. Curry's film moves very deeply into that very question and wonders about the fate of Daniel McGowen, whose story provides the film's bookends, goes under house arrest in his sister's home until his trial in which it will be decided what kind of jail time he will do for the crime of arson. He seems like a nice kid with a sweet voice, somewhere in his mid-20s who smiles a lot, but has eyes that are much more thoughtful, focused and intelligent than most kids his age. When he goes to trial and receives his sentence, we aren't surprised that it is harsh. What does surprise us is the information that McGowan is now going to spend the rest of his life on the government's terrorist watchdog list. Why? His crime, at best, results in malicious vandalism. Why a life sentence on the same list as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the architect of the 9/11 attacks?