Agent heads 'East,' mission goes south

AX157_650D_9.JPGView full sizeBrit Marling, left, and Alexander Skarsgard in a scene from "The East."
These days, the forces of counter-cultural protest or rebellion aren't directed so much at increasingly irrelevant governments but at the powerful multinational corporations that often seem to hold real power. Likewise, instead of turning to law enforcement agencies, the malefactors of great wealth prefer to take care of things in-house.

So it is that an employee (Brit Marling) of an elite private intelligence firm with the all-too-real sounding name of Hiller Brood is sent by her boss (Patricia Clarkson) to infiltrate "The East," an eponymous band of anarchist, freegan mayhem-makers somewhere on the continuum between Anonymous and The Yes Men. She leaves her boyfriend (Jason Ritter) and her natural hair color behind, adopts the alias Sarah Moss, and before long finds herself living in the cultish group's isolated compound in the woods.

Before much longer, she begins to soften towards The East. After all, they're just (among other things) trying to make a point about the dangerous side effects of a pharmaceutical company's product by dosing its executives with said product. Even if their methods are a tad extreme, their intentions are good. Plus, their leader, Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) is dreamy, and fellow Easterner Izzy (Ellen Page) is just a likeable kid with daddy issues. Will "Sarah," a good soldier who used to listen to Christian radio, betray her new friends or her employer?

Marling, who also wrote and produced "The East," and director Zal Batmanglij previously collaborated on "Sound of My Voice," which also explored an enigmatic closed society. In both instances, though, their films suffer from an excess of ambiguity. In politics and plotting, there comes a time when allegiances must be declared and answers given. Perhaps out of an unwillingness to offend, or perhaps from genuine indecision, "The East" never goes as deep undercover as it should.

(116 min., PG-13, Regal Fox Tower)
Grade: B-

-- Marc Mohan