Iron Jawed Angels

source: Iron Jawed Angels

Well, there are a couple of interesting scenes, but overall this is painfully boring and cliched. OK, I'm a guy, so maybe that matters. Women may be able to tolerate this due to the subject matter. I guess the director knew it was a stinker, as she decided to give us a quick flash of the women in jail naked, from the rear. They should have overlaid the word "GRATUITOUS" right over the screen. It was insulting, even though it was a very nice view. Actually, I made it to 62 minutes into the film, and couldn't stand to watch any more, so maybe it has a good ending. I don't know and I don't care. Maybe next time they'll hire a real screenwriter and make a decent flick. This is a real stinker, albeit with a fine cast and high production values.

I am very glad that I have seen this great movie. I was touched by this film. It is fun and exciting. Maybe I am a woman, I feel like crying with the characters, sharing pain and happiness with them. It is the feeling I have never had while watching a movie. I also enjoy the music too. If you are a woman, go and watch it. If you have daughters, watch it with them. I want to thank all actresses, actors, director and other people who were involved in it. I am very grateful that they brought us a deep insight into these woman hero's' battle for the freedom. We owe so much to them.

Despite its historical significance, Iron Jawed Angels misses the mark with its cheesy music, tedious romance plot and by-the-book acting. Some of the dramatic sequences--such as the egg yolk scene--make this film worthwhile, but many of the scenes lack the life and vigor that more experienced actors would easily provide. Huston gives by far the best performance, followed by Martindale. Swank was decent for the role of Alice Paul, but in my opinion was miscast. The romance between Paul and a young man is dull and predictable. Likewise, the opening of the film is hideously boring, as Paul and her friend playfully joke about the most frivolous subjects. Probably the worst aspect of this movie was the music, which resembled today's pop music beats and did not fit the time period at all, thus detracting from the authenticity of the film's sets. Although it has moments of good acting and thought-provoking dialogue, Iron Jawed Angels is weakly-constructed in many ways and probably not worth your time. bitesizemoviereview.blogspot.com

The Woman Suffrage movement and its triumph in 1920 after a 70-year battle begun (in the US) by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony is a great story, full of ups and downs and heroines (and heroes) as well as obdurate villains. This movie had the finest of raw material to work with and it blows it by a distracting soundtrack and anachronistic dialogue, as well as too many MTV editing moments. Obviously, the filmmakers made a deliberate decision to tell this story using a modern style of music and I assume that their repeated use of modern-style dialogue (full of language and usage that date to a much later period) was equally deliberate. So too, I have no doubt, was the use of costumes that in many cases were a modern take on early 20th century styles, much more revealing and sharply cut than anything of that period. Perhaps the intention was to make the film more accessible to younger viewers. But it just doesn't work. Think of a great movie like Richard III, a retelling of the Shakespeare play set not in late 15th Cenury England but in the 1930s during the rise of Nazism. The film embraced the anachronism and used it to telling effect. Iron Jawed Angels, by contrast, is littered with false moments and sounds that distract rather than reinforce the story. The widowed father feeding his baby; the repeated shots of women smoking to underscore their independence; the Sex and the City-lite relationships of the leading women; and on and on. What a shame. The film made me long for a more emotionally truthful story and it did send me running to websites and encyclopedia to read the unvarnished history. But the 2 hours on the box were just awful.

This movie was amazing! I have never known much of the Women's Suffrage, other than there was some protesting and women finally got to vote sometime early 1900s. This movie changed all that... The first time I saw it, I only saw the last 30 minutes and was completely engaged. Hilary Swank and Frances O'Connor were fabulous portraying Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. They portrayed so much passion and determination. I immediately checked out when the next showing was so I could see the whole thing. The first while was a little slow, but sets the stage for the climax. The use of new age music with 1910s fashions were a nice contrast, bringing the attitudes and mood of that time into a present day reality. The script was so well written. Not only was it easy to follow, but very accurate as much as I can determine. After viewing the movie, I rushed out to my public library and checked out several books on the suffrage. So far what I've read is congruent with the movie. It's so awe-inspiring to think what these brave women went through to give us a vote. I can't wait until this becomes available on DVD-I will definitely be buying it as soon as that happens.

I knew when I saw the woman's naked back scrawled with Votes For Women in what appeared to be red lipstick that this would be yet another stinker from HBO. We know this network is capable of good efforts, such as Band of Brothers, but more often than not, they produce anachronistic potboilers masquerading as history. While some of these characters lived, others were created to suit the mawkish tendencies of the producer, writer and director. I could find no evidence of the Leightons in the history sources I consulted. I didn't do an exhaustive search, but their story also felt contrived. Suffragettes in general were single-minded, serious women, not pouty little twits who mooned about on swings with leaves swirling all over them while hip-hop blasted. What was up with that hideous soundtrack? I taught college for years, and my students often amazed me with their capacity to appreciate stories from other eras. Hip-hop has no place in a historical film. No wonder American students suffer from brain atrophy. If you never challenge people, then they cannot learn and grow. When I watched the brilliant Shoulder to Shoulder (the British tale of their suffrage movement) during the 70s, I never expected to hear Led Zeppelin or the Who in the soundtrack. I wouldn't have wanted to. Period music is necessary to create mood and tone. Likewise, those disgusting costumes, which were just plain wrong. The sets looked anachronistic, as well, no less as soundstagey as all get out. Whenever the characters went outside to stand in the cold, no condensation emerged with their breaths. I can't abide cheap, phony productions, and that is what we too often get in these American pieces. Many of the songs were rather lascivious, as were the gratuitous scenes of the homely Swank (she is a decent actress, but she is hardly attractive) masturbating in the bathtub, complete with too many shots of her over-collagened lips. Ben Weissman, the so-called cartoonist/love interest, was a fictional creation. This sort of fictionalized love story in the midst of a biopic seems nothing short of insulting to the viewers, as well as to the historical women who suffered greatly for their cause. With just a few exceptions, women were only just emerging as public femme-fatales at this point, but many of these songs had a slutty tone. In addition to these flaws, the film definitely dragged in many places. Watch Shoulder to Shoulder instead. American suffragettes deserve better treatment than this aimless mess.

I've noticed that of the many things people have to say about this U-bend-encircling monster, all of them heavily critique the film's soundtrack. Ordinarily, I would consider something like that invalid to the film's quality, but not this time. This time, it was the extra step that transformed it from just another mediocre TV movie to a mind-numbing piece of junk food for the MTV generation's soul. From what I can understand, "Iron Jawed Angels" is about as historically accurate as "Godspell." It adds fictional characters (wherever they may fall and however intrusively) to an inspiring true story about a true believer, Alice Paul, who is reduced to a "Sex and the City" reject obsessed with men, hats, and, when necessary, the woman suffrage movement. It changes necessary distinctions into pure good and evil-- Alice Paul, a young, hip, sexy feminist, matches wits with Carrie Catt (Anjelica Huston), whose tangible contributions to the suffrage movement are tossed aside here because they needed a bad guy. Why didn't they just bring in Darth Vader? While the roles in this movie are not supposed to reinforce stereotypes, that's about all they do. There's a difference between "real woman" and "fictional, Lifetime Original Movie man-chasers wishing to be taken seriously." These characters cross that line, reducing their heroic real-life counterparts to babbling bimbos. And the only character who doesn't fit in his sex's stereotype is played by a useless Patrick Dempsey. Finally, we come to the two most heinous aspects of this TV movie (and I emphasize the phrase "TV movie"). First is the soundtrack. It's clear that they were trying to mimic (among other things) the style of the movie "Reds" in everything else. But to keep *its* soundtrack interesting, "Reds" used a selection of rags, traditional music from the time period, and genuine-feeling original compositions by Stephen Sondheim and Dave Grusin. But in "IJA," I was ever vigilant for the inevitable moment when Aretha Franklin's "Respect" would come blaring against a parade montage (don't get me wrong, "Respect" is a great song, but....) The soundtrack is included in the most harrowing part of the film: a scene in which Hillary Swank's Alice Paul is almost certainly masturbating in a bathtub, intercut with a scene of her and Dempsey dancing. The movie then lost all credibility. However, out of the goodness of my heart and my genuine sympathy for the issue at hand, I give it two instead of the one star it deserves. Well... maybe it doesn't even deserve that much. You should be the judge of that, but the filmmakers obviously don't think you're intelligent enough to make that call.

This is an extremely good and entertaining depiction of the suffragette movement at the turn of the last century. All of the front line actresses give strong and believable performances, especially Frances O'Connor as Lucy Burns, Molly Parker as Mrs. Leighton, and Brooke Smith as Mable Norman. Hillary Swank is in the lead and is excellent as Alice Paul. I thought the cinematography was superb and gave a real sense of the period. the script does an excellent job of touching on some other collateral issues and makes them interesting without distracting from the focal point of the movie, e.g., the "conflict" between the younger women in the movement and the established old guard, the attitudes of th esuffragettes towards the men in their lives, and the issues of black women as part of the movement. My pet peeve about real life historical movies is accuracy in lieu of Hollywood license and this one stays as true to facts as you can ask...the scenes from the women's prison are more than compelling and visually forceful. As opposed to some other reviewers, I had no problem at all with the soundtrack and can't imagine why anyone would let it detract from such a well made, acted, and shot movie, especially when wse get the privilege of seeing women as something other than sirens or ornaments for the male characters. Whether you are a history buff or not, and regardless of how you feel about the issue of women voting (cough), you'll enjoy this one...watch it on cable or pick it up when you get the chance, it will be a nice addition to your movie collection.

Modernization of history. Don't even call it history, call it what it is! A rewrite that should disgust even those who know nothing about the subject of "woman suffrage." It would be obvious to a 12 year old that this is not how things were in 1912. Hillary Swank as Alice Paul who was in real life a woman rights leader going against all odds fighting for woman's right to vote. In this HBO version 2004, she's jamming herself in a bathtub to a score of rap music? The crazy camera work is nothing that we haven't seen before and just flat out inappropriate for this subject. I hate 2004! I want to live in the 20's and 30's where happiness was sharing a box of cracker jacks and America was only divided by gender and color. Two years ago HBO gave us Band of Brothers. If it weren't for the actual 101st HERO'S giving us first hand accounts during the film, at this time I would be seriously doubting the validity of that series which I consider one of the greatest ever made. I'm sick. HBO should have left this one to the history channel and take much more careful steps on their next attempt to rewrite history. Iron Jawed Angels should be scratched from the HBO playlist and forgotten. 1/10