SICKO - A Review

I found this review at http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/movie_review/sicko.htm by Yannick LeJacq.
The review is quite long, so visit the above site to read more...

When I went to see Sicko, I sat next to a group of middle-aged, mild-mannered women who were talking softly before the movie started. Then a large picture of George W. Bush appeared on screen, and the women next to me, along with most of the theater, began jeering and laughing so loudly I couldn't hear what the President was actually saying. This continued throughout the movie. The audience enunciated each punch line not with a laugh, but with a resounding “ohhhhh!” as if this were an episode of “Yo Momma.”

You could say this is all circumstantial. But, really, I think this is what Sicko is supposed to be. Almost all the overviews and reviews I've heard of the movie begin with a phrase like, “Michael Moore: first, he took on GM. Then, he took on the NRA. Next up was the Bush administration. Now, he's setting his sights on health care.” The movie poster shows Moore putting on a doctor’s glove with a mischievous and aggressive look on his face under the tagline, “This might hurt a little.” Moore is picking a fight with someone.

Many critics have noted that Sicko is Moore's most mature work, and they praise the new observational, tragic tone he carries alongside his trademark cynicism. I agree that the opening interviews of the movie are some of the best work Moore has ever done. The first half of Sicko consists largely of individual stories of people affected by America's health care system. Moore shows people cheated out of proper financial assistance for obscure reasons, and pairs them with startling confessions by people who used to work for HMOs, describing how they received praise for denying as much financial assistance as possible. But he's only interviewing people that fundamentally corroborate his view on health care. Looking back through his films, you can see that Moore reserves the most eloquent outrage for those with whom he sympathizes.

I think this is because Michael Moore, as the ideologue that he enjoys being, has no real appreciation for journalistic research. He prefers to take a polemic than analytical approach to an issue. It's easy to see why he does this. It gives him his gruff, un-intellectual charm that's made him compelling from the beginning of his career. People didn't go to see Fahrenheit 9/11, just as I'm sure they didn't go to see Sicko, to learn anything new (you can find out very easily that socialized health care means you get treated at the hospital for free); they went because, by supporting Michael Moore, they're inherently becoming part of his rant. Through him, they're shouting at the powerful, incompetent elite they're also sick of.