John Sayles directs "Return of the Seacaucus Seven". The plot? Seven friends are arrested in the 1960s for carrying marijuana to a peace protest. Ten years later, the friends hold a reunion at a New Hampshire summer home. Now all in their thirties, the friends reminisce about the past, reflect on their present lives and brood over long lost lovers.Look closer, though, and "Return" is about the death of a certain type of political activism, or rather, the morphing of counterculturalism into 1980's Reaganism. And so the film is filled with protest singers now shunned by the city, left wingers now working as speech-writers in a Democratic senator's office, radicals who are now conformists, and hippies who now find themselves fully ingrained "in the system". All of these characters are mirrored to another who seems frozen in time, desperately trying to preserve the past. The message: neoliberal capitalism won and the left's become hopelessly moribund.On another level, the "growing pains" of our cast mirror that of the film's director, John Sayles. Sayles has always been more of a writer than a director, and nowhere is this more evident than "Return of the Seacaucus Seven", Sayles' debut. Packed with talking heads, unconvincing dialogue, superficially sketched characters and ugly shots, "Return" is filmed theatre and has aged terribly.But this film was nevertheless an awkward phase Sayles had to go through. Between roughly 1989 and 1999, Sayles made a string of interesting films, but it would take him roughly the decade before this to hone his technique, gain experience and learn how to properly marry his love for prose to any kind of strong visual sensibility. Of course "Return" also hints at Sayles future career trajectory: that of an ineffectual radical, stuck in the past.7/10 – No one remembers it today, but this flick once shook up the indie circuit. Sayles directed, wrote, edited and acted in the film, raised 45,000 dollars to produce it and cast all the unknown actors himself. It would go on to inspire Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill", and a string of other baby boomer movies and television shows about "thirty something year olds".

Soon, it will be 30 years since "The Return of the Secaucus 7" was released. In the time that has passed since its premiere, anyone who has seen also "The Big Chill," the film that is widely considered to have been inspired by "The Return of the Secaucus 7," has enjoyed greater commercial success, often to a point where Sayles' gem is not acknowledged at all.However, despite its so-called "star power" and the slickness of the production, "The Big Chill" pales in comparison with the rawness and reality that is "The Return of the Secaucus 7" - to me, it is vastly superior in every way. Indeed, the film is a harbinger of all that has come since this debut saw the light of day; here are all the elements that have since become hallmarks of John Sayles' entire body of work: originality, authenticity, humor, and the ability to move.This is the stuff of which truly fine films are made; unlike "The Big Chill," which seems to me to be something less than a remake, "The Return of the Secaucus 7" is a landmark.

This movie is wonderful. I never tire of watching it. The dialog rings true and the actors have a feeling of long friendship that makes this movie truly enjoyable. This movie is head and shoulders above most movies made in the last 20 years. I am not saying this movie is the best movie ever made I am ranking it by how much enjoyment I have garnered from it. Since viewing this movie I have sought out every Sayles movie and never been disappointed.

Return of the Secaucus 7 is one of the primary harbingers of the excellence which can be found in modern independent film making. It was thoroughly entertaining and original, and I feel that "The Big Chill" was a tepid remake of this original vision. Thank you John Sayles.