Fahrenheit 9/11 Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)June 28th, 2004
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It's been over a week since I screened Michael Moore's so-hot-you-can't-touch-it Fahrenheit 9/11, and other than believing the film might aid the nation's ability to spell the word "Fahrenheit," I'm still not sure what to think about it. There are two things you should know before you continue with this review: 1) I think George W. Bush is an incompetent liar and a monumental boob who can't string two words together without sounding like an inbred neighbor to Hank Hill; and 2) I pay pretty close attention to the news, so there wasn't any content in Fahrenheit I didn't already know, or for that matter, didn't staunchly agree with.
So what the heck can I say about a two-hour film which reveals nothing (at least to me) and goes out of its way to portray Bush as an inept leader who has surrounded himself with an evil, manipulative core of neo-conservatives hell-bent on steamrolling the United States Constitution just to make more money for themselves and their friends (admittedly, it's like shooting fish in a barrel - finding clips of Bush embarrassing himself ain't too hard)? I don't know, but here it goes...
Fahrenheit, after a brief prologue that shows the horrors of the 2000 presidential election (which was finally called in Bush's favor by Fox News, where one of his cousins was in charge), delves into both the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and the longstanding connections between the families Bush and bin Laden (Moore curiously leaves out the interesting fact that Bush patriarch Prescott was financially aligned with the Nazi Party and his company had its assets seized in 1942 under the Trading With the Enemy Act). We see Bush - like his father before him - on vacation for most of his pre-9/11 presidency. We see Bush read about goats when he knew the US was under attack - sitting on auto-pilot until somebody told him what to do. We see 142 Saudis on 18 planes flee the US two days after 9/11, when regular folks like you and me were grounded for weeks. We see Bush and his cronies block investigations into their underhanded doings and heavily censor those they couldn't stop. We see them grant giant, ridiculously padded no-bid contracts to companies currently or historically aligned with Bush's money-grubbing cabal. We see Bush singing the praises of the military out of one side of his mouth, while he gouges their pay and slashes their benefits with the other.
We see a lot more, too, but like I said before, none of it should be a surprise to people who pay attention to the news, or have read Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud. The main messages in Fahrenheit are simple: Bush is in the pocket of the Saudis, Bush planned invading Iraq - a country that had never attacked or threatened the US, or killed even one of its citizens - long before 9/11, and Bush uses fear (remember the animated sequence from Moore's Bowling for Columbine?) to control a nation of already frightened people to do whatever he wants. Moore stops short of accusing Bush of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, but if you look at the list of people who gained the most - both monetarily and in terms of unchecked power - it's an idea more people should consider.
Fahrenheit isn't completely one-sided, though. Moore sticks it to the Democrats pretty hard in scenes showing them passing the Patriot Act without even bothering to read it, and where not one Democratic senator would sign off on a proposal to formally contest the tainted results of the 2000 election (particularly touching was Al Gore - the president of the Senate - shouting down the mostly minority US Reps leading this particular fight). Moore also keeps himself out of the frame more here than he has in his other docs, and some people consider that a good thing. Personally, I like when Moore has confrontational interviews with squirming subjects who can't get away without looking stupid. He only does it once in Fahrenheit, with very mediocre results. He does better setting certain scenes to pop music standards, like "We've Gotta Get Out of This Place," during the 9/13 Saudi Escape Plan.
Is Fahrenheit merely preaching to the choir? Kind of. I can't imagine anyone from the pro-Bush faction seeing the film and deciding to change their affiliation (I mean, there's no cure for ignorance, no matter how powerful the cure might be). The other side of the aisle will eat it up like peanut butter pie, but what about undecided voters? What about apathetic morons who refuse to vote and/or pay attention to ridiculously important news stories like these? Will Fahrenheit make them care? Will they bother seeing it? Even if the film affects only a few hundred people, it could be enough to alter the course of the election. And that's pretty cool. But I'm guessing most of those "middle" people are going to vote like they're picking the winner of the Super Bowl, which means I'll end up moving to Canada this fall.
1:52 - R for some violent and disturbing images, and for language
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