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We’re getting a little a little sicko and tired Michael, let me first thank you for showing up my lecturers at film and television school by proving that you can ignore everything they say and still become a commercially successful filmmaker. Next, I often find it challenging to write negative reviews when I am naturally attracted to cinema, whose content, actors or direction spark my passing interest. Even though I couldn’t follow a goddamn word I can’t, in good conscience, say bad things about Clint Eastwood’s work in Letters From Iwa Jima. Woody Allen may be past his best (though don’t bet on it); but who am I to criticize? So I don’t. Was Borat the best documentary of all time? Not by a long shot. But … it was a mile better than your latest offering and had the added bonus of containing a great deal more facts. The title of your tilt at US health care is Sicko; but one would have to be certifiably Whacko to take it seriously. Is the US healthcare system a mess? The answer to this question was the same long before your film went into pre-production. More than a decade ago John Grisham penned a little novel about big bad HMOs called The Rainmaker. In it were all of the issues you tried to raise and, ironically enough, though his book is stacked on the fiction shelves of your local library, it was supported by a great deal more fact than you’ve ever relied upon. Your problem Michael is that you have an agenda, which, like of that of an ultra liberal politician is ostensibly driven by (what you both perceive to be) public opinion. It just so happens that the targets of your agenda all happen to be groups with pretty substantial agendas of their own. And with these substantial agendas come substantial resources which are used in the public information spin cycle. There’s nothing wrong, per se, with going after these guys. But how do you prove that they lie and cheat; and distort facts and figures; and present half-truths; and ignore critical and obvious fallacies? Well, if you’re Michael Moore, you lie and cheat; and distort facts and figures; and present half-truths; and ignore critical and obvious fallacies. It is a bit more than just ‘sicko’ when the Kettle Family keeps calling the Pot Family black. Or in documentary parlance it’s a bit like Michael Moore calling Morgan Spurlock (the guy who made Super Size Me) fat! Let’s for the sake of this review take the Moore approach and ignore great big slabs of your doco and just focus on the 'Super Size Me Sicko Spin Segment'. You set up the big finale sequence but pointing out that terror suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay get better health care than poor Americans whose only crime is being poor. Then you rhetorically pose the question: “Why are these terrorists, men aligned to the architects of 9/11, getting better health care than ordinary poor Americans?” In this film they are terrorists, but in your last film they were incarcerated without charge as a result of a war waged on the wrong people in the wrong countries. Furthermore they were locked up in Cuba because the Bush Administration has total disregard for the conventions of international law??? Let’s ignore all of that and ask what you were doing in Cuba this time. You were there with a small boatload of Americans who couldn’t get proper healthcare in the US. Bull horn in hand you demanded to know why Jack Nicholson (assuming he’s still the commandant at Guantanamo Bay) won’t let you and your sickly crew into his infirmary. And you say you’re in search of the truth, well – you can’t handle the truth! Truth is you needed the Bay to segue into an excursion into Cuba to see how those Commie Bastards handle things. A little filmmaking tip for you here big boy: scripting and narrating a documentary is a function of that part of the documentary making process we call post-production. Even though you’re talking in the present tense, it’s an identical process to the Punch & Judy puppet show – you already know what’s going to happen. So when you say: “We decided to take out sick folks on a day trip in the Florida Keys.” It’s a little more than coincidence when they land in Cuba without luggage, passports or travel documents and get let in. Any Cuban living in Florida will tell you it’s a great deal harder to do that particular trip the other way round. So you land your little boat in Havana and get a great deal closer to Castro than Jack Kennedy (or Bobby for that matter) ever did. You show up ‘unannounced’ at the country’s biggest hospital and the good folks at ‘Havana General’ are absolutely astounded that these Americans have landed on their doorstep. Nonetheless they welcome their American cousins with open arms and immediately treat them, free of charge, and send them home with bucket loads of free medication. And you presented this as though it all just happened. Sorry pal, this little episode was every bit as staged as Anna Nicole Smith's kid’s birthday party. A documentary documents events, a fictitious feature film stages events. And you boys no doubt went to some great trouble staging this one. Needless to say there would have been lengthy and protracted negotiations about your trip to Havana. You would have had no trouble convincing them of your deep seated resentment of the political, social and economic system of your country of birth – despite the fact that this political, social and economic system has made you the very successful and very wealthy man you are today. You were able to convince the Cubans you're even better than the guy inside the tent pissing out – you’re the guy inside the tent shitting in. Really Michael, how good can the Cuban health system be if its President can't manage his own bowel movements, let alone his tiny island paradise? It's not really healthcare when your top patient is periodically photographed holding up the 'Havana Post' to prove that he's still alive. Bin Laden lives in a cave with no running water surrounded by AK-47s and a Sony Handycam he bought on eBay for a hundred bucks. Christ the guy can't even afford a tripod, let alone a personal physician and he's in better shape than Castro who, you would have us believe, has stewardship over one of the world's great healthcare systems ... give me a break. Furthermore, in order to get compliance from the Cuban Government, its spin doctors would have told you quite clearly what is and is not on the agenda and what can and can’t be filmed. And you would have complied with all the gusto of a high school kid making promises to the homecoming queen on prom night. The irony is that the US Government, you resent so much, would not (in fact could not constitutionally) bind you to any such commitments. If it did, you would have been well within your rights to publicly castigate it for such actions and I, for one, may have given such castigation my tacit approval. But I can’t approve of your latest film, like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, you’ve proved that you can spin it either way. The world awaits a Michael Moore film that that goes straight down the line.
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