Not for the faint hearted

‘Atlas shrugged. And so did I.’ I’ve always wanted to write that, but the incomparable P.J. O’Rourke has got there first in this summary-cum-review of the new film of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. By all accounts the book has been reverentially adapted to the screen, and O’Rourke warns that the ‘uninitiated will feel they’ve wandered without a guide into the midst of the elaborate and interminable rituals of some obscure exotic tribe.’

Rand’s exhaustive and exhausting book has long divided critics, a trait that seems not to have been inherited by Paul Johannson’s movie. With the predictable exception of the Atlas Society, critics are panning this film. The Hollywood Reporter describes it as ‘botched’ and the Boston Phoenix concludes that ‘not all books should be made into films and this is one of them’. O’Rourke joins the hunting party, writing:

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