Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Average rating

(70%)

Starring:	Michael Moore
Director:	Michael Moore
Studio:	OPTIMUM HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Run time:	122 mins
Genres:	Documentary
Languages:	English
Released:	October 18, 2004
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Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore examines the Bush administration's financial ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family in FAHRENHEIT 9/11, a well-researched, fast-paced, highly controversial, and important documentary that won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Using actual footage and declassified documents, Moore takes a detailed look into political events both before and after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, beginning with the polarizing Supreme Court decision that ultimately gave the state of Florida and the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Moore reveals how the U.S. government helped the bin Laden family return to Saudi Arabia immediately after September 11, when all other flights were still grounded; and examines military recruiting techniques in such poor areas as his own hometown of Flint, Michigan. He even attempts to get congressmen to enlist their own sons and daughters into the military. The writer-director also visits with the troops, including at a VA hospital where soldiers are having second thoughts about America's involvement in Iraq, and spends time with a family whose eldest son is fighting in Iraq. FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is a worthy successor to Moore's previous documentaries, ROGER & ME, THE BIG ONE, and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, once again shining a light on the past, present, and future of the US.

Time Out

"...A deeply emotional and highly important film that horrifies, informs and entertains in equal measure. Moore has launched a blistering Molotov cocktail of a film into the heart of his country. Excellent. A significant call-to-arms..."

Highest rated reviews

3 out of 3 people found the following review helpful:

We let this happen, How?

Billy from Edinburgh, Scotland, 31st March, 2007

If you ever wanted to know what it would be like if the Governments of the free world started behaving like they do in George Orwell’s 1984, then all you have to do is watch it happening here. Michael Moore shows us in great detail the level of deceit and scaremongering that the American people have been exposed to in the in the run up to and during the Bush administration. And frankly it’s damn well frightening. Right from the word -Go, when George W. Bush is ducking and diving, wheeling and dealing his way into the White House, we understand what kind of a man it is we are dealing with. Someone so obviously corrupted by the offer of power and wealth that he is willing to sell his country down the river to get at it. Moore shows us just how deep the rabbit hole goes when investigating the links and chains of money that spread a net so wide as to trap an entire country. Bush’s family over at Fox getting him the decision in Florida was just the start of it. It is at this point in the documentary that we get to watch the failure of the entire American democratic system and we see emphatically just how corrupt their halls of power have become. In what will be shown to be in years to come as one of the most heart-stompingly piteous moments in political history; Al Gore, as President of the Senate has to silence each and every representative member of the black community in Florida, who want to be heard and counted, but who he can’t listen to because their petitions haven’t been ratified by a single member of Congress. He is effectively silencing the only people who can save him because that is his duty. It is historical that this man, who would be leader of the greatest country in the world had it not been stolen from him, is silencing black men and women one after the other as they speak out in his defence. They are not being allowed to be heard because the white-supremacist government won’t even give them one voice, and the one man that they are trying to save is the one man who is bound by law to condemn himself. It is almost as though an evil mastermind had engineered the situation to arise. And so it was that evil was let through the doors and into the halls of power and we had Bush’s first term. Of course this included 9/11, which is the main focus of our documentary, and the subsequent reaction in America, in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Here we get to see first hand, the ineptitude of George Dubbya as a leader and the full extent of his role as a dumb, monkey-brained puppet. The scene in the classroom gives you all the insight you will ever need. But then the scarier parts come. Now we find the real reasons for the man’s pursuit of power. Now he can justify starting wars and making billions in revenue at the same time. Moore shows us once more the lengths gone to by the Bush family to ensure hospitable relations with the big Middle East oil baron’s (ie the Bin Laden’s) and also to have much of their money invested in companies that fulfil military contracts. This makes having a war over oil very beneficial to Bush and his friends as he’ll get a double return on his money. It all starts to make sense now, doesn’t it? We watch as he let’s Osama Bin Laden run away and hide (giving rise to conspiracy theories of Bush asking for the attacks on home soil from his handy militant family friend). We then bear witness to a truly unjust war that serves only to make powerful American’s richer, and which claims the lives of thousands of innocents on both sides. We then get enlightened as to the psychology of how Bush treated Americans, heightening their panic to increase their spending potential. Through it all you start to build up an idea of where Michael Moore get’s all of his visceral, focused hatred from and why he is so scathing and attacking throughout this whole documentary. It’s hard to believe that this is what the brave new world has turned into. Humanity’s hopes for a better civilisation ruined by greed. I liked watching TV Nation on the telly when I was younger, though I thought then, and still do, that some of the things Michael Moore does to get attention were stupid. He always had something to say about what needed to change, and about what was expected of his great nation that he so wanted it to be. He continues that here with great effect and has tackled one of the most important issues of today’s society; the corruption of the free world. This documentary is a great piece of evidence for the annals of history and should be a testament to future generations not to allow themselves to be fooled into the same mistake twice; as a great wise man once tried to tell us, ‘There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. You fool me you can't get fooled again.’

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