Sicko review

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Part of the way through Sicko, a young mother tells the heartbreaking story of her toddler daughter who fell ill with a high fever. Because the woman didn’t have an account with the correct medical insurance firm – because the computer said no – the child was refused emergency hospital treatment and died.

Sicko is a shocker, alright. That’s because, for a change, Michael Moore doesn’t have to cook up the shocks himself. He lets the statistics – and a parade of victims’ voices – do it for him. No trite cartoons or low-blow point-scoring; no backhanded agenda-building or confrontations… Just a scalding, surgical dissection of how US healthcare reform has been endlessly vetoed by smirking neo-conservatives with too much vested interest to allow a – shudder – socialist-style system where everyone helps to pay for each other’s good health. In other words, the rich get richer while the poor get sicker.

In Bowling For Columbine, Moore used a withering central interview with Marilyn Manson to illustrate the film’s main thrust: blaming pop culture for society’s ills is just smoke-screen for self-serving politicians.

Here, he presents notorious political plain-speaker Tony Benn as the booming voice of reason. Benn lays out the humbling truth: Britain’s National Health Service emerged from a post-war urge to come together and rebuild, repair and replenish.

His – and Moore’s – point is calm and clear: all this money and status-lust is whittling down our basic humanity. But the old firebrand can’t stay dampened down for long. When Moore eventually steps in front of the camera, there’s a major wobble as the picture loses his wonderful, syrupy-satirical voiceover and gains a more conventional focus on interviews and nodding inserts.

He’s also way too dewy-eyed about the Cuban system (always a fast-track US establishment wind-up) and quick to swoon over French, British and Canadian healthcare, lazily restricting his approaches to photogenic, middle-class people who tell us how terrific their lives are under public-funded healthcare. For a rangier picture, he really should have lifted a few rocks around the tower-blocks and outcast estates. And, since Sicko initially seems to be following a more direct line of attack – on the insurance industry’s profiteering – it’s a shame that Moore allows himself to be seduced by woolier, more soapbox-friendly themes of injustice and ideology. But Sicko (Moore’s first feature doc since Fahrenheit 9/11) is still the most robust and rounded of his multiplex polemics. Mutters about anti-Americanism are way off the mark. It’s Moore’s strong affection for his homeland that fuels these howls of outrage. "The US is a great country", he says. "Bursting with life and soul and beauty and innovation and possibility: a wonderful place to pursue happiness. Just, whatever you do, don’t get ill".

A bitter but bracing pill. Moore constructs a fiery but unfanatical argument that boils down to a simple truth: Americans need to stop helping themselves and start helping each other.

More info

Available platformsMovie
Less

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.