Creating a political heat

After a masterfully orchestrated whirl of publicity, including its near-domination of the Cannes Film Festival and a huge box-office haul in the US, Michael Moore's anti-Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11 lands in the UK. But what are we Brits to make of it, considering Moore's overriding aim with this film is to oust Bush at November's Presidential elections, thereby circumventing any real need to cater for our market? Plenty.

It takes as its opening gambit, the familiar, but no less atrocious, rigging of the 2000 election by Bush and his cronies, with Moore's faux-naive sarcastic narrative punctuating the events with welcome humour. Charting Dubya's alarming incompetence as President, we arrive at the appalling day of 9/11, depicted all the more powerfully by the use of a blank screen and just the cries and screams of New York as the towers fall. This is where we also see Bush at his most inarticulate and patently panicked. Informed of the terrorist events when speaking at a Florida elementary school, and without the guiding hand of his advisors, Bush is adrift, not knowing what to do. His darting eyes and mouth-twitching show a President unable to be one in his country's hour of need, and who instead carries on reading My Pet Goat to five-year-olds.

Moore then takes us on a journey — familiar to those who even keep half an eye on politics — informing us of the well-scored links between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens, the dubious appointments, the unrelenting cronyism and most importantly, the appropriation of Iraq and Saddam Hussein as the alternate 'bad guys' to get, ignoring the fact they had nothing to do with the events of that terrible day.

This narrative arc concludes with the young American men sent out to fight the war. Focusing on the army's aggressive targeting of teenage working class males in the poorest areas, it tracks their initial, ill-informed gung-ho 'lets-kick-some-ass' approach to combat, to a gradual maturity and heartwrenching disillusionment with the realities of killing - which makes you "lose a little bit of your soul".

Fahrenheit 9/11 isn't a masterpiece by any mark — it's overlong, pompous, manipulative and contains a plenty of inaccuracies. But Moore's aim is true and admirable. Underpinning every chuckle and knowing smirk at Bush's imbecilic actions and the overriding corruption and ignorance of many, is the knowledge that this is happening in our time. Without the veiled gauze of history, permitting a sense of detachment, Fahrenheit 9/11 hits hard.

Fahrenheit 9/11
Cert: cert15