Sicko

Detractors will dog Michael Moore’s Sicko—a diatribe about the American health care industry, er, system—for its grandstanding, its predictability (yes, Sicko ends with a little-guy-versus-big-guy confrontation and, yes, it’s shamelessly over-the-top), its glossing over of practical complexities, and its formal staleness, which is perhaps its greatest failing (someone must put a stop to those we-were-so-dumb-back-then montages of ’50s mental hygiene films). All things considered, though, Sicko remains an admirable, novel piece of pop culture, simply because it wants to do something—or, rather, wants to be about something other than believing in yourself and following your heart. Like a modern-day Harriet Beecher Stowe, Moore doesn’t want to be masterful; he wants to be socially and politically efficacious. And Sicko just might be—more so than Fahrenheit 9/11, which was too late and too clumsy—because its point, barring its fallacies and elisions, is blunt and right: privatized health care is a nightmare for the underclass. In this sense, the real sicko of the film isn’t the American health care system per se, but the majority of Americans who, though suffering under the greedy caprices of their system, do not vote, let alone protest. And yes, Canadian, French and British health care is somewhat idealized in Sicko, but far more interesting is Moore’s underlying contention that most citizens of those countries have no idea how good they’ve got it. SEE IT NOW

Sicko is now playing at the Scotiabank Theatre (259 Richmond St. W.), Beach Cinemas (1651 Queen St E.), Eglinton Town Centre (1901 Eglinton Ave E.) and others.