I'm not going to post a debate on the political or philosophical themes of the movie since they reflect more Ayn Rands original text and have been talked about ad nauseam by other reviewers. Instead, Im going to give my honest opinion on what I saw on the theater screen at 7:05 p.m., April 15, 2010 in Westwood, California.

Taking into account that I had recently re-read the entire novel and previously seen several clips of the movie, including the trailer, on the website, my initial assessment of the movie was:

I was not at all disappointed.

Here are the positives:

The movie stayed true to the novel as best as it could considering the enormity of the task of taking a book which was written nearly 50 years ago and setting it into the not-too-distant future. In our modern age of instant communication with smart phones and the Internet, leaving most of this out of the script while still incorporating flat screen televisions was impressive.

I can certainly understand the difficulty of moving the past into the present while incorporating a possible future was a daunting task, yet the movie was able to do this effortlessly while maintaining a sense of reality.The characters which Rand created were translated onto the screen by actors who seemed to understand the impact of subtlety. There was enormous amount of unspoken dialogue which communicated perfectly with only a gesture or a glance. With so much text of the novel to work with, it was quite an accomplishment.