It is quintessential Moore: expertly crafted, eminently entertaining, one-sided and overly simplistic.
Sicko (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:191
Fresh:177
Rotten:14
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: Though some consider his political bent divisive, Michael Moore's humanism is pretty universal in this devastating, convincing, and very entertaining expose of America’s health care system. Moore's permissive to download Sicko paired with the film's activity-inspiring website made it a considerable accomplishment in grassroots activism.
Theatrical Release:26-10-2007
Synopsis: America's most incendiary filmmaker, Michael Moore, returned in 2007 with this health-care-industry exposé. SICKO tackles material as controversial as the topics explored in Moore's other films,... America's most incendiary filmmaker, Michael Moore, returned in 2007 with this health-care-industry exposé. SICKO tackles material as controversial as the topics explored in Moore's other films, yet does so in a way that places the focus on ordinary Americans affected by the nation's health-care crisis. After providing some historical background on how our nation's medical care system became so ravaged and unfair, Moore interviews a series of individuals and families who have had their lives all but destroyed by the denial of care in the service of profit. While there are two sides to the gun-control debate and even a legitimate discourse for how to best wage the war on terror, it's simply impossible to justify how a baby girl can wind up dead because her mother's health insurance wasn't accepted at a nearby hospital. Moore smartly allows this and other stories to be told with little or no interference, conjuring strong feelings of empathy, rage, and deep sadness. Of course, SICKO isn't a PBS documentary, it's a Michael Moore movie, and his fingerprints are all over it. Moore visits countries that have universal health care--spectacularly so when he takes several World Trade Center workers to Guantanamo Bay (and then to Cuba) to receive health care that they were denied in the United States--and presents a compelling argument for adopting a similar system in the States. Moore's ultimate purpose here is to compel Americans to care for one another, and it's a simple request that shockingly must be made via a major motion picture, making SICKO essential viewing. [More]
Starring: Michael Moore
Starring: Michael Moore
Director: Michael Moore
Director: Michael Moore
Producer: Kathleen Glynn, Michael Moore, Meghan O'Hara
Studio: Weinstein Company
Reviews for Sicko
This is a movie, not a position paper, and Moore aims to entertain as he informs.
Make no mistake: Sicko is an explicit call for revolution, and it is a profound and horrifying one.
What's most striking about Sicko is how composed, even serene it is compared with Michael Moore's previous acts of cinematic insurgency.
Though the title of the film is an explicit reference to our health care system's sad state of affairs, it may also apply to anyone unable to relate to the struggles of everyday Americans who have to pay for overpriced and ineffectual medical coverage.
The silliness of Moore's oeuvre is so self-evident that being able to spot it is a basic intelligence test, like the ability to match square peg with square hole.
Sicko, which takes on America's profoundly profitable and catastrophically inefficient health care system, is Moore's most assured, least antagonistic and potentially most important film.
In between the laughter and the tears, it's an intensely effective, gut-wrenching experience.
Its major drawback is its failure to allow even a single dissenting argument, but Moore proves again to be the most entertaining and opinionated documentarian in America and greatest opponent of greed.
In a summer of dumb, shameless drivel, Moore delivers a movie of robust mind and heart. You’ll laugh till it hurts.
Moore, despite all the accusations of manipulation and economies with the truth, is hard to resist and few others would be prepared to put themselves so firmly in the firing line in such a doggedly determined way.
May I introduce a new phrase into the Franglais dictionary? C'était un slam-dunk.
An affecting and entertaining dissection of the American health care industry, showing how it benefits the few at the expense of the many.
This is the movie where Michael Moore gets a few Michael Moore haters off his back.
Less fueled by anger and less incendiary than his former work, Sicko finds Moore in a lighter mood, serving as a contempo Mark Twain or Will Rogers tour guide in a cross-cultural survey of health systems and lifestyles in Canada, France, UK, and even Cuba
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