In my case, and in the case of many of the people who will be turning out opening weekend in droves to support it, Fahrenheit 9/11 is preaching to choir. George W. Bush and his adminstration are toxic, and their policies are uprooting the foundations of our country: this is something I believe, a position I endorse, and I think Moore has made a strong and important film that supports it. I didn't need this film to validate my opinions on these matters, but there's no doubt that it strengthened them. As someone who, over the course of this administration, has gone from apathatic to cautiously critical to fully outraged, I hope this film succeeds and changes the minds that need to be changed. As a critic, I'll review it as a film, and consider its faults, but that it has faults should be no deterent; this film needs to be seen.

The best thing Moore has going for him here, aside from winning the Palm d'Or at Cannes and gaining endless free publicity from the Disney/Miramax debacle and the conservatives who seek to suppress him, is that he's wearing his intentions on his sleeve; he made this film to get Bush out of office. It's full of propaganda, as it's been accused of being, but the fact that Moore admits as much makes a big difference; his agenda is overt, not subversive, and it's important to keep that in mind when watching the film. He brilliantly presents a portrait of a leader who practically defines the term ineffective; is it accurate? I personally think so, but I was also aware that I was being ever so slightly coerced towards an opinion that I had already formed. When Bush spends those seven indecisive minutes in the classroom on September 11, Moore's narration suggest what he might be thinking, just in case we have any doubts. Certainly, it's not hard at all to string together clips of Dubya making grammatical goofs, acting like a good old boy, being indecisive; he's an endlessly easy target.

Where Moore hits his goldmine, where he goes past propaganda, is with his illustrations of the Bush family's connections to the Bin Ladin family, and the corporate ties his administration his to Saudi Arabia. It's material you may or may not already know; regardless, seeing it here, with concrete video footage, is rather sobering. Knowing that an army of fact checkers and lawyers have pored over every bit of the footage in the film to ascertain its accuracy is nice to know, but even if they hadn't, it'd be hard to look at this footage and explain it otherwise.

These connections take up the first half of the film and set up the second half, which is more of a traditional anti-war film. We see Bush calling himself a "war president," talking about how his agenda is all about war, and then he dissapears for long periods of time. The Moore shows us the kind of footage Network Telivision won't; mutilated bodies, dead children, grieving parents, callous soldiers listening to heavy metal as they roll into battle, and, more effectively, disillusioned soldiers disgusted with the situation they've found themselves in. Equally shocking, I found, was the actual footage of the bombing, portions of which we have seen on TV -- shocking, because the footage broadcast was so severely truncated that it would be almost impossible to determine the amount of damage being done. I was reminded of how, in the old days of censorship codes, a filmmaker couldn't show the effects of a gunshot in the same shot as the gunshot itself; a similar principal seems to be in application with our media.

Through all this, we remember what we've seen in the first half of the film. The connections are clear; this war in Iraq seems to be little more than a business strategy. War supporters will point out that no mention is made of the good the war has done; to which one might ask them what good they're speaking of. The removal of Saddam is, of course, some sort of questionable accomplishment, and Moore makes one error that I think might harm his case; he shows us an pre-war Iraq that is a happy and cheerful place. The country is tantamount to some extreme level of hell now -- but it wasn't a picnic before we were there, either.

When he won the Palm d'Or, Moore was told by jury president Quentin Tarantino that he was being awarded for his filmmaking, not his politics. Indeed, the film is masterful assembly of found footage and interviews; it is never exploitative, especially in the actual coverage of the events of Septemebr 11th. Moore is famous for his humor, but it's largely subdued this time around, appropriately so. There are a few segments, one in which he inserts the faces of Bush's administration into an episode of Gunsmoke and another where he provides a hilarious role call of the Coalition Of The Willing, that might have been better left on the cutting room floor, because they're too funny, and in the case of the former have no point but to amuse. On the other hand, the scenes in which he tries to enlist the children of Congressmen or reads the Patriot Act over an ice cream truck's loudspeaker -- classic Michael Moore, as they might be called -- are not as outrageous as you might think. Like his trip to K-Mart world headquarters in Bowling For Columbine, there's nothing sardonic about them; at least in that case, he accomplished something, but his stunts here have an urgency and hopelessness to them; so much more is at stake, and the way the congressmen go out of their way to avoid him is sobering.

I have to admit that after the film was over, I felt vaguely disappointed; I wanted it to go further. But then, after thinking about it, I wondered how much further could it have gone? How many more concrete indictments could be made against our president? I think my disappointment lies with me, and that I went into this film hoping that it would contain things that would make everyone who supports Bush have second thoughts, that it would pull the wool from their eyes; of course, the problem is that his die-hard supporters have no wool in their eyes, and all those concrete accusations are things they support. The film will not sway them, because they can't be swayed. They want our country to go the way it's going; yes, war is bad, and all the terrible things Moore shows are shocking, but that's to be expected.

But if it's true that a huge number of registered voters are apathetic, and that an even greater number of American citizens are not registered at all (just like I was at the last election), then I think this film will have the intended affect; it's a highly effective cure for apathy. People who support Moore's cause will see this film for that reason; people who are set in their opposition will see it to see just what they're up against; but everyone else, who hasn't made up their mind, are the ones who need to see it the most. I honestly hope they aren't swayed by the propaganda, and that they make up their own minds; I also believe that there's more than enough factual material to convince any reasonable person that Bush needs to go.

We'll see in a few months, I suppose; but then, of course, there remains that troubling topic that Moore touches on very effetively at the beginning of the film. If Bush did in fact steal the presidency in 2000, what will stop him from doing it again? I shudder to think.