The Stranger

This overly reverent documentary opens with the kind of off-putting, blowhardy quote you might expect from an environmental vigilante: “I am a conservationist, and that is my business: getting in trouble. I am here to say things people do not want to hear and to do things people to not want to see. I’m here to piss people off—that is my job.” Paul Watson has been pissing people off for decades—throwing himself between baby seals and sealers’ clubs, scuttling Iceland’s whaling fleet, being attacked by the Norwegian navy. Watson’s message is compelling enough without the constant, condescending narration—it’s hard not to agree with his cause when you’re looking at a pile of bloody baby seal eyeballs. His unflinching, aggressive activism is inspiring (he calls Greenpeace “corporate whores”), and well worth a documentary, but Pirate for the Sea suffers from an awed, folksy one-sidedness. By Lindy West