reviewjournal.com -- Neon: MOVIE REVIEW: `Fahrenheit 9/11'

reviewjournal.com -- Neon: MOVIE REVIEW: `Fahrenheit 9/11': "Less Moore equals more power.
That's the winning formula for Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11.'
The controversial documentary, which captured top honors at last month's Cannes Film Festival, delivers a devastating -- and devastatingly assured -- indictment of George W. Bush's presidency.
Beyond its considerable factual impact, however, 'Fahrenheit 9/11' also demonstrates that Moore's learned a few filmmaking lessons since his 2002 Oscar-winner, 'Bowling for Columbine.'

Moore twists familiar TV images, from "Bonanza's" cattle-baron Cartwrights riding the range to "Dragnet's" just-the-facts Joe Friday interrogating shifty suspects. He shows administration insiders primping for TV appearances. (Memo to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz: licking your comb before use is no substitute for mega-hold hair spray.) And Moore uses canny snippets of upbeat pop ditties to punctuate revealing video clips.

Perhaps none seems more apt than the theme song of the '80s TV series "The Greatest American Hero," which accompanies footage of Bush's premature May 2003 pronouncement, from the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

"Look at what's happened to me, I can't believe it myself," the song begins. "Suddenly I'm up on top of the world -- it should've been somebody else."

As we all know, it wasn't somebody else. It was George W. Bush. And, as "Fahrenheit 9/11" so scathingly reminds us, seeing's believing."


By CAROL CLING
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Grade: A