Ayn Rand published her monumental magnum opus Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Producing it for the big screen took until 2011 for the first of three segments, an achievement Rand did not survive to experience. J. Neil Schulman wrote Alongside Night in 1979, with a substantially shorter ‘gestation period’ to reach the big screen in 2013.

Both movies have in common that they deal with philosophies, ideas, and the consequences of ideas, shockingly radical ideas offensive to neo-cons, majoritarians, liberals, or other conventional or statist thinkers: ideas about moral culture, property, liberty, and economics that are at odds with contemporary dogma and in defiance of historical trends. Both movies have a missionary quality, a quality that requires study by the interested viewer, to come to grips with the inner core of what is being expressed. Both movies are driven by the story, to the extent that celebrity performers might actually distract from the thematic import of what the movie means to convey.

Alongside Night features the tribulations of Professor Martin Vreeland, his wife Katherine, and their children Elliott and Denise. Dr. Vreeland has the distinction of having advised the European Community on how to salvage its failing economy, while the American economy slides into the dustbin, the victim of central control and tinkering with the economy, with too many exact parallels to real-world events to detail here.

The powers-that-be seek Vreeland's assistance in reversing the dreadful downward spiral which federal regulation, experimentation, and mismanagement have triggered.

Dr. Vreeland, an academic with great practical reason, is played with restrained gusto by Kevin Sorbo, the “anchor star.” Vreeland is in a position somewhat like that of Hank Reardon in Atlas Shrugged, in that he has a naive hope the system can be rebuilt. However, no John Galt is needed to turn his beliefs upside down and cause him to take a deeper second look, for federal agents, particularly NSA thugs, attempt to kidnap his family to hold them hostage, nabbing his wife and daughter. This incredibly hostile act radicalizes him to the point where his loyalties vacillate, then switch polarity, so that he decides he is not meant for even limited-government government service.

The Revolutionary Agorist Cadre consists of free-thinking individuals of the libertarian, agorist, and anarchist persuasion.

The group stages guerilla-style acts to expose the hypocrisy of the government (the federal government, that is) as well as to cast sand into the gears to slow down the mechanisms of oppression of the people by the elites.

At the same time, the introduction of The New Dollar causes uncertainty, fluctuations, and dislocations. One problem is that the unpaid U.S. military service members seem to desert in droves, some of them joining the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre. Brad Linaweaver appears as Kurtis H. Landy, union negotiator for the deserters.

Radio Free Enterprise is another cultural resource devoted to undermining the status quo, with The Crypto-Hippie Darknet as another. No plot spoiler is involved in revealing that free-market insights and references abound. Von Mises on the Liberty coin is one. Elliott's substitute teacher Murray Konkin is an obvious splice-up of Murray Rothbard and Samuel Edward Konkin III (who makes a posthumous cameo appearance).

The hip-hop send-up of Frederich Hayek is briefly quoted, as well as a small section from Linaweaver's recent Silicon Assassin. This is where the well-informed viewer will find cues and hints that may escape the general audience.

The U.S. president is portrayed as a populist buffoon, clearly a figurehead or policy-puppet without a clue, perhaps not unlike the real world around us, in that particular sense. An early scene depicts a foot-chase by FEMA agents of some pedestrians, which savors somewhat of Keystone Cops comedies, somewhat of a Monty Python skit, and somewhat chillingly of Fahrenheit 451.

Delving too deeply into the plot would constitute a spoiler; not the point of this review. The question of whether the good guys win or not turns entirely on who one thinks the good guys are. I think the good guys win, but then I am the wild radical, after all. The movie features natural tensions, fraternal camaraderie, familial anxiety, social unrest, family animosity, stark philosophical conflict, death and violence, vista and scope, plots and schemes, indoor and outdoor action, and a lot of cultural references, wisely inviting audiences of many demographic characteristics to join in the fight for the restoration and enjoyment of freedom. Freedom is not the domain nor the objective of any group, but the objective of self-aware individuals, whatever their group affiliation.

An aside: in an early scene, Joe (the character played by Schulman), who, as a Resident Assistant at George Mason University, let then-student Martin Vreeland smuggle his classmate Katherine into his dorm room, offers slight reproof to a visitor to the bookstore, which Joe owns and operates: “It's all in Rothbard, it's just all in Rothbard; what DO they teach in the schools these days?” Intentional or not, this purely echoes Professor Digory Kirke, after speaking to the Pevensie children in C. S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe: "he muttered to himself, ‘I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.” (Page 54 of HarperTrophy paperback edition.)

Great music elevates this movie to a higher level. The title song by Soleil O'Neal-Schulman stunned me: at first, I thought I was hearing Shirley Bassey (the golden voice who sang the title song to the movie rendition of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger), her voice is so rich. The professional orchestra which plays the score is first-rate, with variegated but fascinating incidental music thrown in at intervals.

The movie comes to us from a book, but unlike Atlas Shrugged, which also sprang from a book, the writer here keeps a steady hand on the whole thing, for J. Neil Schulman produced, wrote, directed, and has a role in this engaging production. Schulman freely admits to Rand's influence in his extensive acknowledgments section at the end. However, considerable inventiveness and ingenuity, combined with evident prescience (the book was written nearly 40 years ago; but the movie, with some technological updates, speaks to the present time very powerfully) make the work as contemporary as this morning's weather, something briefer and different than Rand's work.

Street demonstrations play a recurring role in this movie. The speakers and singers at the principal demonstration do real justice to laissez faire and libertarian themes. One could wish for more of the protest singer's fare, and the lyric sheet. In fact, one could wish for crowds who chant “It's not my debt” in response to the National Debt and all that implies. When such a mass uprising actually does occur, the State's days are numbered.

The movie has the great advantage that the powers of the market are not on the defensive here. A pretty well-laid scheme of counter-attack gets put to the test. “Putting up with it" is never treated as an option. That theme of pro-active resistance partakes of Rand's masterwork in the sense of vigorously fighting back, though by different means.

Those who have succumbed to “putting up with it" may be emboldened by this movie. Those whose longing for freedom takes on a practical aspect may find inspiration here. Those who favor Empire and domination will be repulsed, of course; how sad…

Abundant professional talent and an adequate budget supported the making of this fine movie. The result is visually bright and stunning, laced and layered with great music, and pregnant with the theme of the unquenchable human spirit seeking liberty.

No animals were harmed in this carbon-neutral production, but we must dispel the rumor that J. Neil Schulman is the long-lost younger cousin of Ayn Rand; alas, he is not.

[The original of this review originally appear in MondoCult.com, the online presence of Mondo Cult magazine http://www.mondocult.com/]