DVD Release Date:  November 6, 2007
Theatrical Release Date:  June 29, 2007
Rating:  PG-13 (for brief strong language)
Genre:  Documentary
Run Time:  113 min.
Director:  Michael Moore
Actors:  Michael Moore

To my immense surprise, he had me at “hello.”  After all, even though Sicko is a Michael Moore film, it’s pretty hard to watch a man sewing up his own leg or listen to someone describe how he chose between severed fingers, due to the cost.  And those were the people who didn’t have healthcare.  The real horrors came from those who did.

But then he went and called Hilary Clinton “sexy.”  That’s when I knew something was off.

Don’t get me wrong.  Moore makes a point with his newest movie—a devastating one, and one that we’d be fools not to heed.  In case we didn’t already know, he shows us, in living color, that the American healthcare system has become inaccessible, ineffective and frighteningly corrupt.  Americans aren’t even taking care of themselves, much less others.  And if we don’t do something soon, we’re all going to pay the price.

Overall, Sicko is very entertaining filmmaking, without the annoyance factor.  This time, Moore doesn’t shove mics into unsuspecting faces, merely for shock value.  He doesn’t ambush any politicians or CEOs, and for once you almost wish he would.  Save for a few footage cameos of President Bush and a crying politician (who for some reason keeps ranting about how much he loves his mother), he is remarkably restrained.  Sure, Moore’s still front and center with his “golly gee whiz” and baseball cap act—not to mention a show-off boat trip to Guantanamo Bay, where he screams at military guards from a bullhorn.  But this time, he’s training his cameras on the victims.  And unless you have a rock-hard heart, you can’t help but be moved.

We meet numerous families who have toiled under the umbrella of insurance for years, only to be dropped or refused life-saving care when they needed it most.  Most disturbing of all are the interviews with the 9/11 rescue workers who became sick from inhaling fumes at Ground Zero.  Because of various technicalities, they’ve been refused healthcare by the City of New York.  The stories are legion.  Almost everyone has a healthcare horror story of their own, in fact—if not several.  So it will come as no surprise to most.  It’s just depressing to hear that it’s happening in such large numbers, and with so much regularity.

Moore, who can barely contain his adulation as he gazes upon a statue of Karl Marx, then presents his solution to these problems:  socialized medicine.  To argue his case, he interviews Che Guevara’s daughter, a Marxist-quoting French doctor and Tony Benn, a former Labour Party politician who is a strident advocate for communism.