Watching “Battle in Seattle” is like being jabbed in the belly with a police baton, and not in a good way. Written and directed rather ambitiously by the actor Stuart Townsend, who has never written or directed anything before, it uses fictional characters to tell a true story but gives us no reason to care about the people, their lives, or their political causes. The riots that occurred at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 may well have been historically significant -- but you wouldn’t know it from watching “Battle in Seattle,” which insists on telling us how important the issues are rather than showing us.

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Grade: C-

Rated R, a lot of harsh profanity, a lot of moderately graphic violence

1 hr., 40 min.