Shearer, a part-time New Oreleanian, argues that the city’s levees failed not because of the epic strength of the storm but chiefly because the flood-protection system was built shoddily by the Army Corps of Engineers. Furthermore, when the Corps’ work was cited by various scientists and engineers as at the root of the disaster, retributive action was taken against the whistle-blowers. To cap the injustice, the Corps was assigned to rebuild the system and put new protections into place even without having to answer for its ineffective earlier work.
The gravity of the content is clear, but the structure of the film is not. Shearer narrates only intermittently, there are several distracting (though often, admittedly, entertaining) tangents, and the film lacks a definitive statement of its intent and conclusions. “The Big Uneasy” is at once breezy and substantial, but it could have been more powerful if it were, paradoxically, sharper and blunter.
(Shearer himself will be in attendance at the Clinton Street Theater to discuss the film after selected showings on Saturday and Sunday.)
(98 min., unrated, probably PG-13, Clinton Street Theater) Grade: B