The Big Uneasy Review

• 20th Sep 2010

It had all the makings of a gripping story. Heroes risking persecution in search of the truth, fighting corruption and greed. The revelation of a long history of blatant incompetence and disregard for human safety on the part of those in power. Innocent citizens’ mistaken trust. All set in the beautiful, vibrant New Orleans. A story to rival The Pelican Brief, only true, and without Julia Roberts.

However, in The Big Uneasy the story gets lost in the telling. After making such gems as This is Spinal Tap and collaborating on The Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman, this is writer and director Harry Shearer’s first attempt at a non-mockumentary. His first go at making a properly serious film and it feels like it.

Which is a shame, because he covers a worthy subject. Shearer does explain very well what went wrong with the New Orleans flood defences when Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana shoreline in 2005. Using the evidence of several intrepid engineering experts, he reveals the culpability and negligence of the US Army Corps of Engineers in building the city’s levee system and, scarily, shows us how its lackadaisical approach looks set to continue.

There’s a substantial amount of substance. But a film is, well, a film. It’s a creative work – a piece of art. Which is something Shearer seems to have disregarded in telling this story. The Big Uneasy demonstrates little respect for, or joy in, the potential of the medium. In short, it’s short on style.

As an artistic piece it lacks unity, a strong vision, sophistication. Perhaps the filmmakers had only just discovered all the neato features of their editing suite and so went a bit nuts… The story is broken up into overly obvious ‘chapters’, each introduced with a text heading and cheesy soundtrack and for some unfathomable reason, actor John Goodman pops up occasionally for some slightly surreal and rather cringe-worthy “Ask a New Orleanian” segments.

It is slightly too technical, do we really need to know the exact composition of the soil under the levee walls? Even what it tastes like? And it’s slightly devoid of people, the real people, the ones who rely on these unstable flood defences. In one all-too-rare scene a resident stands outside her resurrected home talking about her trust in the stability of the levees, a trust that all the evidence seems to prove is misplaced. It was a poignant moment. It would have been nice if there were more.

Shearer says he had his political hat on when making this film and it is obvious he is admirably passionate and knowledgeable about this issue. This is a story that needs to be told. However, it would perhaps be better told with an artist’s hat on. The Big Uneasy is a great piece of research; it’s just not a great piece of filmmaking.

Kathy Alys