Fahrenheit 9/11 **** (2004, dir Michael Moore) – Classic Movie Review 1378

Film-maker Michael Moore delivers a devastating attack on the Government of President George W Bush in this controversial and devastating 2004 Cannes Palme D’Or-prize-winning documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which he calls ‘the temperature at which freedom burns’.

Moore portrays Bush as a dozy, trigger-happy cowboy and an idiot puppet President, pathetically waiting for instructions on what to do next after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers in 2001. He argues that the Bush Administration allegedly used the tragic event to press ahead with its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You can argue with the documentary’s one-sided point of view and a maybe a few of the facts Moore presents. But this brilliantly researched film carries a crushing body blow to both the Republican and pro-war causes in the USA.

However, against the odds and expectations, Bush was re-elected President, and Moore went into a three-day depression, then emerged to announce a sequel, Fahrenheit 9/11 1/11 for 2007, though in fact his next film, made that year, was Sicko.

Republicans tried to stop the film being shown, resulting in major distributors dumping it. But it went on to take $120million at the US box office, an all-time record for a documentary.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1378

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/

Marine recruiter in Flint, Mich. approaching teenagers outside a shopping mall to enlist them in the military.

Michael Moore talking with Congressman John Tanner on Capitol Hill. He spent the day there approaching pro-war members of Congress to recruit their children to fight in Iraq.