Title: Sicko
Release Date: 06.22.207
Directed by: Michael Moore
Studio: Dog Eat Dog Films
Rating: 7 of 10

{mosimage}As the presidential election of 2008 inches ever closer, as the debates become more heated and the candidates simultaneously suaver and more harried, more adulated and more beaten down, films like Michael Moore's Sicko become even more important. In what's become something of a Moore trademark, Sicko is an extremely one-sided, biased political argument posing as a documentary.

However, this time, taking aim at the US health care industry, Moore couldn't have chosen a better (or more timely) target. Learning about the positions all the candidates take on various issues, there seems to be one common agreement among them: Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, we all have to admit that the health care system in America is badly broken. Indeed, health care reform will be one of the hottest topics for debate this election, and rightly so.

Interestingly enough, Sicko does have a segment highlighting Senator and current Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The film at first praises her to the skies, portraying her as the smart, gutsy front runner in the battle to obtain universal health care; it even refers to her as “sexy.” But this is only so she can fall all the harder; Moore then takes the position of a spurned lover as he details what he sees as her betrayal, her “purchasing” by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies as she becomes one of the top politicians with regards to how much money she accepts from them.

As a film, Sicko is designed, and designed well, to inflame, shock, unsettle, and yes,to rally its viewers to its cause. It's exciting and it's inspiring, and this makes it essential viewing for our changing times. Though the events described in the film took place years ago, it's worth revisiting especially now, when we tend to forget that an election is not simply a spectacle put on for our amusement, like a sports game, with satisfaction coming from having our chosen team “win.” We as voters are hiring someone (whose salary will be paid with our tax dollars) to do a very important job for us, and we are free to conduct our interviews through the mediums of television, newspapers, blogs, and yes, movies like this one. Is it, like Moore's previous Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, one-sided propaganda? Of course. But as we all know, propaganda doesn't work very well if there's not a very real issue in need of resolution for it to exploit.

{mosgoogle left}And Sicko wouldn't work nearly as well if it weren't also maddeningly entertaining as a film; it's brutally funny and watchable as hell. One can only laugh as for instance, a woman tells her of insurance company's refusal to cover an ambulance ride because it wasn't “pre-approved.”

It would be inhuman not to sympathize with, and become angry at, the situations described by Moore's subjects: one woman tells of how her daughter died because, rushing her feverish child to the nearest ER, she was told that that particular hospital was not “in-network” for her insurance plan and that they therefore could not treat her. Of course, once she had taken her child to the nearest approved hospital in her own car, it was just in time for her to go into cardiac arrest.

Another woman tells of her insurance company's refusal to pay for care she needed as a cancer patient, because they considered her “too young” to possibly have cancer!

Smartly, though hardly in a nod to fairness, Moore also presents members of the insurance companies themselves blasting their industry-- there's footage of Dr. Linda Peeno's famous testimony telling of how she received large bonuses for denying as many medical claims as possible while employed with Humana, and an interview with a man whose job it is to find a reason, even a ridiculously frivolous reason, to deny a claim and save insurance companies money.

{mosgoogle right}The film is most successful when Moore simply acts as medium for these very real and sympathetic people to tell their horror stories. When it uses tactics that are patently gimmicks, however-- the infamous Moore-led boat trip to Cuba to obtain lower-cost medical care, for instance, or the blatantly prejudicial look at other countries' universal health care systems as being no less than utopian-- it is less successful. It almost feels like Moore doesn't trust that the very affecting real life stories he's presented are enough to get us to come to the conclusion he wants us to; perhaps he frets that unless he hits us over the head with something a hundred times, we won't get it.

A lot of viewers won't appreciate being talked down to in this manner, or the fact that very important facts (like how much more citizens of these other countries might be paying in taxes) are clearly being glossed over to further his agenda. At the conclusion of the film, you will either agree that the answer to all our health care woes is no less than a single-payer plan, eliminating the evil health insurance companies once and for all, or you won't.

Like how Passion of the Christ was criticized for being too violent and polarizing but really did inspire people in many cases to attend church, Sicko might be inflammatory and biased, but it will most likely get more people to the polls on Election Day. For all its flaws as a film and indeed, as a cohesive argument, we desperately need films like this to remind us of just how much is at stake.