News that the Justice Department is investigating five major networks for suspending the White House TV pool last month was met with outcry that it was another example of Trump administration retaliation against the media.

Alarming as it may be to First Amendment groups, among antitrust experts, there are doubts that the DOJ would have much of a case.

Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act restricts competitors that restrain competition. In this case, the five networks that make up the TV pool — CNN, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News — last month withheld their participation to protest the White House’s exclusion of CNN. For about four days, that meant fewer video images and other coverage of Trump that week, including the ceremonies surrounding the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

William Kovacic, global competition professor of law and policy at George Washington University, said, “I think you have to take any lawsuit from the Department of Justice seriously.”

But he said an antitrust claim against the networks likely would have a “very remote prospect of success.”

At issue is “what is the predominant character of the behavior: Is it a commercial interest or is it designed to achieve some form of First Amendment expression?”

“To me, if there is a commercial aim to this, it is well hidden,” said Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, said via email, “Group boycotts are illegal when they stifle competition, such as forcing a competitor(s) out of the market.”

She added, “Presumably, the arrangement among the five networks is designed to increase coordination and efficiency in the distribution of news footage. There is no anti-competitive intent or effect. The networks were responding in solidarity to repression of a free press (1st Amendment).”

Court Precedence

The lines between commercial conduct and protected First Amendment activity can be blurred, but courts have sided with boycotting parties even then.

Sam Weinstein, professor at Cardozo School of Law and former attorney in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, said that “typically a non commercial boycott is protected by the First Amendment.”

“It would seem to be a non starter,” he said.

He cited the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in NAACP vs. Claiborne Hardware Co., involving an organized 1960s-era boycott of white-owned businesses in Mississippi. The justices held that the state could not hold the protesters liable for damages when they engage in lawful activity protected by the First Amendment.

Weinstein also referred to another Supreme Court case, FTC vs. Superior Court Trial Lawyers, when the justices ruled that a boycott by court-appointed lawyers for indigent defendants violated antitrust law, as its purpose was to to gain increased compensation. The majority compared it to horizontal price fixing.

The latter case, Weinstein said, is different from what happened with the TV pool. Prices and compensation were not at issue.

It’s still unclear whether the networks will comply with the DOJ investigative request, but the networks already made it clear that they were jointly suspending participation in the pool, releasing a statement that “no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

“The real question is a question of law, not a question of fact,” Weinstein said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the DOJ said over the weekend, “Members of the television press pool have boycotted covering White House events. Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act. The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.”

“An End Run Around”

Democrats already have accused the Trump administration of politicizing the Antitrust Division, violating the norms that have separated the White House from the DOJ since the Nixon era. The investigation of the networks is likely to add another example to their arguments.

Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said via email, “Threatening an antitrust investigation is just another example of this Administration misusing regulatory authority to punish the media for doing something the President dislikes. Political boycotts are part of a longstanding American tradition and are protected under First Amendment law.”

He added, “Whether the government’s excuses are dressed up as ‘national security’ or antitrust law, this is another attempt by the Administration trying to make an end run around the First Amendment to control news coverage.”

Ink has hit London.

Danny Boyle and his starry cast, led by Jack O’Connell and Guy Pearce, took to the BFI London Film Festival carpet for the U.K. premiere on Monday night, around a month after it opened the Venice Film Festival.

“I expect the difference to be palpable,” began O’Connell, star of Sinners and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, to The Hollywood Reporter about finally putting Ink in front of its native audience. “It’s a London film. If it doesn’t work here, it’s not going to work anywhere.”

The movie, adapted from James Graham’s stage play, depicts Pearce’s Rupert Murdoch as he enters the British newspaper scene, acquiring the then-failing tabloid The Sun in 1969. Hiring Larry Lamb (O’Connell) as editor, the two combined far-right political reporting and populist rabble to turn the paper into a dark force in British media. Murdoch would take the lessons learned at The Sun and apply them to build his U.S. media empire with The New York Post and Fox News.

Backdropped by the smoky, seedy journalistic epicentre that is Fleet Street, O’Connell said he didn’t categorize the notorious Lamb as a “bad” person. “I think he was just perhaps overly ambitious,” said the star. “I think this guy was on a pursuit, or his obsession was newspapers, and I guess he broke a couple of rules along the way. And it wasn’t victimless, but yeah, I don’t consider him an out-and-out bad guy.”

Two halves make a satisfying whole in this lean, mean action-horror, in which twin vampires stalk a scorching-hot Madras Max: Fury Road dystopia in the none-too-distant future. The 1996 Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino collaboration From Dusk Till Dawn springs immediately to mind, but, compared to that, director Samjad sinks his teeth into the meat of his movie in next to no time. Scored with an urgent techno-bhangra beat by Midhun Mukundan, the result is a violent revenge thriller that has been lapped up on the genre circuit since it premiered in the Midnight Madness strand at TIFF earlier this year.

The film starts with the minimum of backstory, which is at odds not only with the norms of Indian cinema but also the press book, which suggests that a whole lot of exposition about the genesis of the story’s two siblings has been cut. This might be for the better; our introduction to Ethan and Ivy (Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj) is brief but suitably ominous. “Born of mortal dust and vampire blood, the twins walk in darkness,” a title card tells us, before we’re shown a brief flashback to their seemingly idyllic childhood where the two fight like cat and dog (“Raising you two will be the end of me,” says their mother).

Cut to the present, where the two are taking a road trip to the much busier Mumbai district of Pai Nagar in shades that not only protect them from the sun but, conveniently, make them also look very, very cool. As they make their way, we cut to a family of four making the same trip across the desert, passing Babu’s Puncture Shop, whose owner makes a phone call. Soon the family is being tailed by a couple on a scooter, carrying what appears to be a baby and yelling, “Sir! Sir! Oil leak!” The father pulls over, and the car is immediately swarmed over by bandits, who brutally kill him — plus his wife and two kids — with no mercy.

The aftermath of the crime is cleaned up with ruthless efficiency, the gang hauling off the car, stripping it for parts and burning the bodies of the victims, a process that threatens to rinse and repeat when Ethan and Ivy follow almost immediately in the same slipway. The murder of the family is graphic enough, but what happens to Ethan and Ivy is far more perverse, especially when Ivy’s apparently dead body is defiled by one of the feral desert gang members. Samjad keeps the twins’ superpowers under wraps for an agonizingly long time, until the sun goes down and their bodies are able to regenerate.

The wait is worth it; when Ethan and Ivy finally take their revenge on this criminal outfit — one by one, piece by piece — it’s with a satisfying sense of bone-cracking justice, orchestrated like S. S. Rajamouli’s 2022 breakout hit RRR at 200mph. The genius of Samjad’s conceit, however, is that, for all their superhuman abilities, the twins are vulnerable — not only is sunlight their only weakness, Ivy is also deaf and non-verbal, which adds a real sense of threat towards the end, when things look very bleak indeed.

Part of this is down to Samjad’s fantastic sense of world-building; like Peter Weir’s 1974 black comedy The Cars That Ate Paris, Half is a sardonic comment on the sleazy eco-system of crime: Babu’s Puncture Shop is just one layer in a pyramid that goes surprisingly high and eclipses even the bumbling, paid-off police force, which wilfully sees no evil and nervously treats each investigation as “extra paperwork”. There’s also a twitchy paranoia at play, since Ethan and Ivy, as outsiders, inevitably spark a turf war as various warring factions try to figure out who is killing their men.

There aren’t too many directors that can sustain this level of inventive carnage — even Takashi Miike has yet to show a man choking to death on the stump of his own severed hand — but Samjad directs the action with clarity and skill, helped immeasurably by Very Tri Yulisman’s incredible fight choreography. A puzzling coda means the film ends later than it probably should, but Samjad has already established his impressive cult bona fides: If you only see one gory Malayalam neo-noir spaghetti western vampire beat-’em up in your life, make it this one.

Title: Half
Festival: Sitges, TIFF
Director: Samjad
Screenwriters: Praveen Viswanath, Samjad
Cast: Ranjith Sajeev, Aiswarya Raj, Amala Paul, Abbas, Sreekanth Murali
International sales: Best Friend Forever, Fragrant Nature Film Creations
Running time: 1 hr 36 mins