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55 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely A Must-See Movie For The Summer!, July 16, 2004
This film is a brilliantly-contrived and choreographed emotional roller coaster ride that incites a quite palpable resulting attitude of disgust, dismay, and disdain on the of the viewer. Mr. Moore manipulates the images, voice-overs and antics to both amuse and outrage us all at once, in an obviously outrageously satirical (and sometimes hysterical) look at the war in Iraq and the people who engineered us into invading that country, at terrible cost to ordinary American men and women. In essence that is the simple message of this pseudo-documentary; that simple, trusting and basically honorable young and patriotic Americans are being badly abused and misled by an administration and a government out of control, a government which, in Mr. Moore's view of the world, serves its people up to slaughter without worry and care. After all, it is not, as he so comically and memorably demonstrates, the sons and daughters of the governing elite who serve and die in God-forsaken places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, in one chaotic series of vignettes, Moore corners unsuspecting Congressmen and makes a pitch to have them volunteer their kids as potential cannon-fodder for Iraq. Needless to say, the point is well taken, as only one current member of Congress has a son stationed in harm's way in Iraq. He counter-poses such banal images with those of battle casualties and struggling working class mothers crying over their lost sons after the fact. One must hasten to acknowledge that in fact, Michael Moore makes no pretense in the film of attempting to be balanced or fair; on the contrary, he is puzzled by the suggestion that he do so. After all, as he says, the opinions coming from the environs of the Oval Office have hardly been balanced or fair. And while one may argue that he has sometimes played fast and loose with the sequences of events, or the connections between various elements tied together in the movie, there are few outright falsehoods one can point to as an example of downright misrepresentation. He also quite cleverly puts the lie to the idea that protest or argument is somehow unpatriotic. This places an enormous burden on those who would argue one must remain silent in solidarity with the troops as a show of respect for their sacrifice. Yet it is hard to argue with Moore's logic that anyone who really cares about the welfare of the troops would take care not to misuse them or continue to place them needlessly or carelessly in harms' way. As James Bovard contends in his new book, suggesting, as Mr. Bush does continually, that by fighting the terrorists in Iraq we will avoid fighting them here, is at best an almost criminally naïve notion, and at worst, a cynical and murderous misrepresentation of what is going down in Iraq. We are not becessarily there to preserve their freedom or ours, argues Mr. Moore, and any suggestion that such is the case will have a hard time explaining events that now transpire on an almost daily basis. Moore's intent was to ratchet up debate on the policies and practices and rationale of the neo-conservative regime current in power, and to suggest that perhaps Americans begin to question it and its motives much more closely. Thus, despite it dramatic excesses or its willingness to sometimes take liberties in connecting things which may or may not indeed be so tied, I believe in creating public controversy and stirring public debate the movie will be a stunning success, and that it may well lead to having some measurable resulting political impact on the election in the fall. Enjoy!
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