Fahrenheit 9/11

Starring: George W. Bush

Directed by: Michael Moore

RS: 3.5of 4 Stars

2004 Documentary

Rumor has it that Michael Moore needs to get his Bush-bashing documentary out pronto (with the DVD following close behind) because his film will pass its sell-by date on Election Day. That would reduce the brilliant battering ram that is Fahrenheit 9/11 to propaganda with no resonance as cinema, history, humanism or entertainment. Nuts to that. Getting Bush out is just part of Moore's agenda. Political hypocrisy, across all party lines, is on trial in this broadside from the director of Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine.

Disney found the film too explosive to release it through its Miramax subsidiary, so Miramax bought it back and found other distribution. At Cannes, the film won the Palme d'Or, the top prize. The ovation that followed was dismissed by cynics as European anti-Americanism. Nuts to that, too.

What Moore does in Fahrenheit 9/11, besides drubbing Dubya and his family's ties to Saudi Arabia, is to measure the human toll that U.S. foreign policy after 9/11 and the war in Iraq are taking on the disenfranchised. Moore likes to rile folks up, which he does with sharp humor. Did I mention that Fahrenheit 9/11 is ferociously, cathartically funny? In one pointedly hilarious scene, Moore rallies members of Congress to get their own children to enlist in the Marines. No chance. Moore isn't above a cheap laugh at the expense of a pro-war Britney Spears, John Ashcroft warbling a patriotic ditty or Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz vainly prepping for a TV interview. But he steps aside more often than not to let America speak for itself, whether it's GIs in Iraq, the mother of a dead soldier or the unemployed being recruited in his hometown of Flint, Michigan.

Images of the dead and wounded, and of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, aren't new. But Moore has marshaled what's on the record and off into a stinging indictment of where we're going. In a multiplex filled with Hollywood cotton candy, we need him more than ever.