Director: Michael Moore

Summary: America's most incendiary filmmaker, Michael Moore, returned in 2007 with this health-care-industry expose. SICKO tackles material as controversial as the topics explored in Moore's other films, yet does so in a way that places the focus on ordinary Americans affected by the nation's health-care crisis. After providing some historical background on how our nation's medical care system became so ravaged and unfair, Moore interviews a series of individuals and families who have had their lives all but destroyed by the denial of care in the service of profit. While there are two sides to the gun-control debate and even a legitimate discourse for how to best wage the war on terror, it's simply impossible to justify how a baby girl can wind up dead because her mother's health insurance wasn't accepted at a nearby hospital. Moore smartly allows this and other stories to be told with little or no interference, conjuring strong feelings of empathy, rage, and deep sadness.

America's most incendiary filmmaker, Michael Moore, returned in 2007 with this health-care-industry expose. SICKO tackles material as controversial as the topics explored in Moore's other films, yet does so in a way that places the focus on ordinary Americans affected by the nation's health-care crisis. After providing some historical background on how our nation's medical care system became so ravaged and unfair, Moore interviews a series of individuals and families who have had their lives all but destroyed by the denial of care in the service of profit. While there are two sides to the gun-control debate and even a legitimate discourse for how to best wage the war on terror, it's simply impossible to justify how a baby girl can wind up dead because her mother's health insurance wasn't accepted at a nearby hospital. Moore smartly allows this and other stories to be told with little or no interference, conjuring strong feelings of empathy, rage, and deep sadness.


Of course, SICKO isn't a PBS documentary, it's a Michael Moore movie, and his fingerprints are all over it. Moore visits countries that have universal health care--spectacularly so when he takes several World Trade Centre workers to Guantanamo Bay (and then to Cuba) to receive health care that they were denied in the United States--and presents a compelling argument for adopting a similar system in the States. Moore's ultimate purpose here is to compel Americans to care for one another, and it's a simple request that shockingly must be made via a major motion picture, making SICKO essential viewing.

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Michael Moore’s latest documentary may see him moving his sights away from the purely political arena, yet he loses none of his bite in the process. And with Sicko, a slanted, at-times devastating attack on the American health care system, he’s made one of his best films.

The problem, of course, for a UK audience is that it’s a very American system that Moore is attacking in Sicko. He’s out to highlight the number of people with health insurance who are getting perfectly legitimate claims turned away, as the companies concerned get fat off the profits. But there is a British angle, as Moore presents a surprisingly idyllic take on Britain’s own health service, that does sit in the midst of the film’s flabby middle section.

Yet when Moore points Sicko at the very people the system is letting down, his skills very much come to the fore. He puts forward passionate, partisan arguments with an incendiary style that few working American documentary makes can come close to matching, and it makes Sicko compulsive viewing. Whether you agree with the man’s politics or not, his films are provocative, very well made and hard not to admire. Sicko is no exception. --Jon Foster

Main Language:	English
Year:	2007
Release Date:	October 26, 2007
Runtime:	123 minutes
Certification:
Keywords:	English, General, Documentaries, Biographies, Sicko
Genre:	Documentaries & Biographies