Sicko (2007)

Review

Michael Moore stays a little more out of the camera frame and delivers a handful of comedic punch-lines fewer, but continues to make documentaries in a biased and populistic, but highly skilful and evocative way. The most important aspect of a documentarian is still the value of what he presents, and Sicko, like Bowling For Columbine and partly Fahrenheit 9/11, deals thoroughly (if selectively) with an important subject. Moore's stance is that since what he communicates has been undermined and obscured by the American government for decades, his subject has the right to be presented in a somewhat propagandised manner. There is no doubt for a moment that Moore feels truly that if his views on public healthcare had been followed, the United States would have been a better place to live. Thus, his objectives are noble and good. There is also no doubt, however, that he very much wants to be the semi-messianic figure who guides people towards the right path - something which is somewhat cloyingly revealed through a supposedly "anonymous" donation to pay for the cancer operation of his no. 1 opponent's wife.

Like any Michael Moore documentary, Sicko is best viewed with a critical state of mind and an understanding of what Moore wants to do. He clearly paints too affable pictures of the European models, but he has so much firepower about a system which quite obviously doesn't work and which feels hopelessly uncivilized to anyone who doesn't perceive 'socialism' and 'the end of the world' as synonyms (i.e. people who haven't been subjected to the anti-communistic scare tactics of many previous American governments) that the film cannot come off as anything but powerful and effective.