SICKO (2007) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Michael Moore
Doctor Moore will see you now . . . The American cinema's muckraker-in-chief strikes again with a predictably scathing indictment of the country's health-care system. With a brief nod to the 50 million Americans who aren't insured at all, Moore zeroes in on the horror stories of people who are covered and still find themselves up against insurance companies that systematically deny treatment, even when it's a matter of life and death. Then he goes to Canada, Britain, France and Cuba, - all places where universal care is guaranteed - and if his vision there is impossibly utopian, it does make the point, juxtaposed with footage of homeless patients in the U.S. being dumped on the street like human garbage. A populist Don Quixote tilting at corporate windmills, Moore's as pugnacious and confrontational as ever, but he makes you laugh and he makes you think. His approach is irreverent and almost gleefully underhanded, but somehow not all that mean-spirited. Turning down life-saving care for a dying patient and adding the money you've saved to your company's profits, while collecting a bonus in the process - that's mean-spirited.
