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Sicko Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for strong language) Genre: Documentary Theater release: June 22, 2007 by Lionsgate & The Weinstein Company Directed by: Michael Moore Runtime: 2 hours 3 minutes Cast: Michael Moore (Himself) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Let's face it, we all come to Michael Moore's films with our own established preconceptions, just as Moore arrives onscreen with his rather renowned baggage. For those who loathe his methods and politics, he is, as the great film critic Pauline Kael said, a peddler in "gonzo demagoguery." For those who celebrate his zealousness and guerilla tactics, he is a prophet, calling forth repentance in the public square.

After winning the Academy Award in 2003 for Bowling for Columbine, Moore spent his time at the podium railing against President Bush and what he called a

"fictitious war." The next morning, even he seemed to know that he had gone a bit too far. He apologized for his vitriol, and admitted that he'd made a stop over on the way to the ceremony that had left him passionate and fervent to speak truth to power.

He had come from church.

Moore began preparing for Sicko almost ten years ago. Inspired by a segment in his TV show, The Awful Truth, Moore got the idea to make a film tackling the absurdities of the American healthcare system. Then came the Columbine shootings. And the Iraq War. After the dust settled from Fahrenheit 911—the highest grossing documentary in film history—Moore found himself returning to his shelved idea. After all, healthcare affects more Americans than either gun violence or terrorism.

Filmmaker Michael Moore interviews a doctor

There are no congressional ambushes or CEO confrontational stunts in Sicko. Moore seems to be channeling the great social critics of the past, like Mark Twain, stating his argument and framing his ideology clearer than ever before. Sicko is less angry and antagonistic than his former films, incorporating a surprising amount of joviality for a subject as painful as this. You can say things in comedy that you can't say in drama. Moore has somehow managed to utilize both in a way that will make you laugh yourself sick. This is his most accessible and enjoyable film, and he might just win some fans with this one.

While many would assume Moore is out to slay the dragon of America's nearly 50 million uninsured citizens, he's not. It's about the millions of others who dutifully pay into their insurance each and every month, and when it comes time to draw upon that reserve, find themselves ensnarled in bureaucratic red tape. America currently ranks No. 38 in global health care—just above Slovenia. Touting the best medical care known to man, Americans are far from the healthiest people on the planet, nor do we have the longest life expectancies. There are third world countries with lower infant mortality rates than the United States.

Moore populates his film with profiles of ordinary Americans whose lives, in one way or another, have been forever altered by collisions with the healthcare system. It is through their stories and tears that the often-overwhelming colossus of healthcare is distilled into very real, very personal vignettes.

Moore's research took him around the world

There is the man who cut off two of his fingers and was told he had only enough money to choose one to be reattached. There is the woman who was charged for an unapproved ambulance ride after she was rescued unconscious from the scene of a car crash. There is the debt-ridden couple who now live in their daughter's basement because their insurance refuses to cover their cancer and heart treatments. There is the mother who was turned away from the hospital because she didn't have the right insurance. There are the disowned 9/11 rescue workers now suffering debilitating respiratory infections as a direct result of their heroic efforts at Ground Zero. There is the dazed patient dumped by her hospital at a homeless shelter because her insurance had run out.

Sicko continues Moore's tradition of assailing power structures, but unlike his last films, there is no singular entity for his incisive scalpel, but rather a triumvirate composed of HMOs, pharmaceutical companies and hospital bureaucracy. Sicko traces the origins of HMOs back to Nixon's White House with some jaw-dropping revelations, and insists that private health insurance companies are driven by pure greed. It is in the HMO's best interest to pay out as little as possible. Each approval is money they lose; each refusal is cash in their pocket.

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