By Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe from the Web, February 27, 2004

To some, the old-fashioned word "suffragette" suggests captivity in a tight corset rather than women's rights. The phrase "Iron Jawed Angels," on the other hand, connotes an extreme-sports-like empowerment that speaks of youth, drive, and spiritual inner glow. And that's the goal of the new HBO movie "Iron Jawed Angels" -- to buff up history for younger viewers and liberate the early women's movement from its stodgy image.

To tell the story of the steel-willed college grads responsible for the 1920 amendment giving women the right to vote, the movie charges up Wilson-era America with a bag of speedy camera tricks, a vital young lead actress (Hilary Swank), a tad of sexual suggestion, and an unabashedly contemporary soundtrack. In the middle of "Iron Jawed Angels," for example, a parade of early-20th-century protesters in narrow skirts and lace-up boots marches down Main Street while we hear the hip-hop strains of Lauryn Hill's "Everything Is Everything."

These stylistic strokes actually work. They're bold enough to keep you watching, but not distracting enough to seem self-indulgent. While she takes advantage of today's cinematic and sonic languages, director Katja von Garnier stays grounded in the production and costume design of the period (1912-1920). The movie, which premieres Sunday night at 9:30, is like a sepia photograph that has been digitized, suffused with color, and given a touch of sparkle in the eyes. It's an energetic and attractive portrait of a time when American women were excluded from democracy and too used to oppression to fight for change.

Unfortunately, too much of the electricity and excitement stays on the surface. "Iron Jawed Angels" relies on a disappointingly conventional script, one that delivers stock characters who have no dimensionality, and simplistic plot abbreviations that you'd find in a high school textbook.

Alice Paul (Swank) and Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor) are equal-rights activists who find the older ladies of the National American Women's Suffrage Association too safe and conservative. After a few run-ins with NAWSA's stiff Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston), they branch out on their own, handing out fliers to women emerging from factories. With their growing band of idealists, which comes to include a young senator's wife and labor lawyer Inez Mulholland (Julia Ormond), they campaign across the country and picket the White House, where pedestrians attack them for criticizing a wartime president. They land in jail, but that doesn't stop Paul and her crew from resorting to a hunger strike. Unlike the older suffragettes, they recognize the importance of getting press, aware that public embarrassment can motivate a politician more than matters of principle.

The only character among all of them who manages to sound more than one note is Paul, thanks to Swank, who makes the most of Paul's maniacal vision even when the script pushes her into martyrdom. Paul is also given a private life, albeit an inability to handle a private life. Sexually attracted to Washington Post cartoonist Ben Weissman (Patrick Dempsey), she's unwilling to expend her energy on anything but the cause.

The rest of the women of "Iron Jawed Angels," both in NAWSA and in Paul's noble posse, are cardboard figures of either cranky elders or do-or-die followers. And the male politicians, including Woodrow Wilson (Bob Gunton), are flat. The movie's Wilson only wants the women swept aside, even into jail, unwilling to face the contradiction of fighting for democracy overseas while it suffers in America.

Despite its storytelling limitations, though, "Iron Jawed Angels" does have resonance -- as a reminder of both the power of activism and the power of a wartime president.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.

Posted Boston Globe 2-13-04