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THE BIG ONE Send This Review to a Friend
Irrepressible Michael Moore is back again with THE BIG ONE, mercilessly skewering big business for callously firing workers--excuse me, the polite term is "downsizing"--even while profits are soaring. Moore, whose "Roger and Me" was an amusingly pointed blast at the policies of General Motors, took advantage of a tour promoting his book "Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed America"" to visit places where employees were getting raw deals in the midst of vast profits and lavish executive pay.
Moore's method can best be described as creating a cinema essay. No objective documentaries for him. He is an old-fashioned muckraker who is enormously entertaining, part stand-up comedian, part agitator, as he goes after assorted foes. His technique is to ambush corporate executives and their underlings with a camera crew. He usually succeeds in making his targets look foolish.
One especially funny sequence is his confrontation with Nike chairman Phil Knight, who agrees to see Moore, only to be surprised by the filmmaker's offer of free air tickets to Indonesia so Knight can visit his factory there. Knight won't take the bait, but Moore persistently tries to enlist Knight's conscience in his battle against using cheap labor abroad instead of American labor at home.
At the outset Moore describes a hilarious gambit illustrating his theme that politicians will take money from anyone. He tells how he set up bank accounts for bogus organizations like Hemp Growers for Clinton and Pedophiles for Perot and claims that contribution checks sent under such guises were accepted, cashed and acknowledged with thank you letters. Moore elicits roars of laughter from the audiences he addresses so gleefully while on the road.
A little of Moore goes a long way and the film could gain from cuts, but he has hit upon an entertaining method to make us think about the injustices suffered by so many who are losing their jobs in an allegedly booming economy. Moore is one of a kind and "The Big One" is a welcome helping of thought-provoking fun that raises partisan filmmaking as entertainment to new heights. A Miramax release.
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