Fahrenheit 9/11

Review by Jason Gaston

Michael Moore is ready to shake things up yet again with another documentary, this time attacking the President of the United States himself, George W. Bush. In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore looks at the little-known ties between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family, the Iraq war, and September 11th. This is some pretty ballsy stuff that Moore has put together and, not surprisingly, it's going to ruffle a few feathers.

I myself am not naive enough to take Michael Moore's highly biased movie at face value. I mean, let's face it, if his silly and embarrassing diatribe at the Oscars a couple of years ago isn't indicative of his own agenda, I don't know what is. Still, there's a lot of allegations in this movie that you just can't dismiss and some of the raw footage - the unedited footage of Bush talking about terrorism on the golf course and the contradictory statements made before and after 9/11 by the White House staff - is very damning.

The movie opens with a recap of the 2000 elections that put Bush in the White House. Moore's humorous ironic style paints a seedy picture of Bush basically stealing power away from the rightfully elected president.

From there, we move on to the September 11th attacks as raw camera footage shows Dubya sitting in a classroom for over seven minutes after being told that the United States is under attack. He looks confused and bewildered as he picks up a children's book called My Pet Goat and starts to read. The way this movie portrays him, you're pretty surprised at this point that he can read at all.

The film goes on and on with more and more damning evidence against Bush, his family, and his staff and then, strangely, it seems to veer off while talking about the Iraq war. It's obvious that Moore wanted to show the horrors of war and the cost that soldiers and innocent civilians have to pay so that it can be waged, but this is the weakest part of the movie... almost as if this was a section that Moore fell in love with and prolonged for as long as possible. If anything, this is the weakest leg of the movie.

The rest of it, though? Brilliant. Like I said, I'm no fan of Dubya by any means, but I'm not gullible enough to believe anything that Michael Moore has to say either. What I am sure of is that Moore is an accomplished and gifted filmmaker and this movie does what any good movie should... it presents you with topics of debate, pisses you off, and gets you talking. This is the kind of movie that I relish despite my political beliefs.

I'm not sure how much of Fahrenheit 9/11 is the truth and how much is just creative embellishment, but if just 10 percent of this movie is true then I am both frightened and angry.

This is, simply, a movie anyone who calls himself a proud American should see.