Sicko : Movie Review


For his fifth full-length "documentary," Michael Moore turns his attention to another hot-button issue: health care in the United States. The points he makes - that the health care system is badly broken and other countries accomplish what we have trouble doing - aren't revolutionary, but they are presented in a compelling manner. For those living in the United States, watching Sicko isn't an uplifting experience. Moore, as has been adequately reported over the years, isn't a hard-hitting journalist or a documentarian in the traditional sense of the job description. He's more of a rabble rouser and a button pusher. His ego often gets in the way of his making a point (as happens on several occasions during Sicko), but he knows how to edit and spin in such a way that even the driest of topics can become compulsively watchable. As a documentary, this movie has the same problems as all of those in Moore's oeuvre; as a polemic or a visual op-ed piece, it's an effective piece of filmmaking.

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Author : James Berardinelli