A Whisper to a Roar

A vivid documentary with unusual access to the key players in the geopolitical dramas it recounts.

An impressive array of archival news footage, enlightening interviews with activists, politicos, academics and journalists, plus a dispensable Alfred Molina-narrated animated parable, round out this provocative, if at times overly ambitious effort.

An expertly drawn primer on the soft dictatorships that constrained five different countries and the peaceful revolutions that sought to expunge them.

The film makes a convincing argument that, in spite of some recent setbacks, movements for democratic change are alive and well, but it glosses over the problems that arise once the people have to implement the power they've seized.

A Whisper to a Roar traces a too-familiar step-by-step political pattern: the transformation of a liberator into a despot, his subsequent reign of tyranny and the popular uprising against it.

Clearly intent on inspiring viewers, the informational film makes a fine sum-up for those who've found the last decade's geopolitics too much to keep track of, but isn't promising in commercial terms.