With Jim Sabatini

Sicko

Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by: Jim
Release date: June 29, 2007	Released by: The Weinstein Company

Michael Moore is a sick, grandstanding individual to many, especially those loyal to George W. Bush.

His new documentary isn't as "hot button" as his Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling For Columbine, but Sicko has plenty of ideas about the U.S.'s troubles with health care.

Some countries like Canada, France, and Cuba are able to treat those who lack insurance, unlike our country. The radical Moore equates health care to the auto industry; Americans want to have the best available product for them, so why not have something across the board accessible to all.

Is Moore opening a Pandora's box or trying to elicit laughter? For some he might putting the cards of life and death on the table in a shadowy way. Or maybe not. It's obviously something important to voters for the next major election whose candidates might be under the influence of the kind of conglomerates portrayed in The Constant Gardener.

Hundreds of hours of film are chopped into something bracingly laced with wit as it's pointed out that Nixon understood the correlation between money and health care.

On-line, Moore gathered plenty of material from those with health insurance to the nearly 50 million US residents who don't have any. While France is tops with the World Health Organization for not dumping patients into a homeless shelter like one that is seen in Los Angeles, some might be skeptical how they even provide clean clothes for them.

One might think that other hospitals overseas might be too accommodating for a cinematic activist like Moore who got in trouble for moving 9/11 workers to Cuba for medical care on their debilitating lungs. And, are the drugs that someone pays next to nothing really as beneficial as what is costly for those who can't afford it in the US? Sicko is a candid, often humorous examination of how bad our "health" is right now, something humanistic, even spirited locked into the politics of a privatized system.