Let’s pretend for a minute that Boycott isn’t for you. You’ve seen the trailer, read the reviews, and prefer not to watch.
It happens. And it’s usually not a problem. But now, let’s pretend that your decision to skip watching is against the law.
Sound ridiculous? You might be interested in Boycott after all. It’s about how anti-boycotting mechanisms are being written into law all across the United States.
And so this is the one where a Texan Muslim speech pathologist, a Scotch-Irish Arkansan redneck, and a Californian public servant walk into a courtroom. Though they seem to have little in common, they each value the freedom of speech. Rather than sign anything that included anti-Israeli-boycott language, they sued.
Hearing about these prohibitive laws is quite frankly shocking enough to keep our attention, but the moral rectitude of our three subjects is even more riveting. These are ordinary folk putting their livelihoods on the line.
We listen to their stories from the source while lawyers, think tank and advocacy group interviewees pepper in context. Apparently, boycotting has been around since the beginning of the country. So too religion and politics. And this is where the doc gets bogged down in bias.
Moviemaking techniques like fast editing and montages with ominous music set the tone that rights are being attacked. Hurting people (and thinkers who agree with them) are given the sole spotlight. Opponents receive minor screen time, and are either unprepared or not as thoughtful as the other interviewees. Even the pro-boycott experts—whose job it is to rely on reason rather than emotion to convince people—are exasperated when they try to summarize their opponents’ positions. The moviemakers of course made sure to justify this one-sidedness in the credits (by explaining that several people it had requested to interview declined to do so). None of these things alone is fatal, but put together in the manner that they were, they’re suspect.
An uneven hand does its cause no favors—even if that cause is just. By already having its mind made up on the issue, Boycott doesn’t allow its viewers to make up their own. It’s a head-scratchingly disappointing technique for a movie which otherwise heroizes people who think for themselves.
And yet all that said, Boycott is worth your watch. At worst the issues presented are real and compelling. And at best, these ideas (and lawsuits) might better the lives of people living all across the globe.