Review of Sicko (2007) by Ne — 29 Jun 2007

I give it 2 points for the excellent photography in London and Paris, but this is otherwise an awful movie. Imagine if Bill O'Reilly had some sort of conversion and woke up as a leftie, and did the same arrogant-blowhard-pundit routine on his show - describing something he hates, then explaining how something else he hates is the cause of the 1st thing, and oversimplifying or distorting where necessary.

If you were trying to parody a Moore film, you couldn't have done so any better than "Sicko", and after 6 years of George Bush I'm pretty sick of incoherent ranting. A quick summary of this movie is as follows: the American health care system is evil and does nothing right, the Canadian, British, French, and Cuban systems are good and do nothing wrong, and America is a horrible society by implication.

Health politics, by their nature, are a VERY complex and subtle topic - the American system does some things well and other things poorly, and llots of people in France, Canada, and the UK are dissatisfied with their care - but Moore is about as subtle as a plane crash, and doesn't even discuss how these systems work or what the causes of any of their problems are.

Which means, of course, that he offers nothing by way of solutions.