Director: Michael Moore 2007 123 min.

That's up with Michael Moore bashing? Just read the reviews for his recent release Sicko and you may not believe that a person could be described with a more contradictory set of words. He is, apparently, a genuine activist, but also a disingenuous demagogue. He is manipulative, it is said, yet his analysis too simplistic. He is a regular guy (a blue-collar philistine even), but-as it's beginning to be pointed out-not from the same tax bracket.

The right hates him for obvious reasons. The centre finds him too passionate for its taste, whereas the left finds his jaunty, patriotic populism too annoying. Regardless, Moore is a popular man, and he sells documentaries as if they were fantasy films.

If you have followed Michael Moore's career, you know what he is about, and moreover, what he is against. With Roger and Me (1989), Bowling for Columbine (2002), Cannes and Oscar-winner Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), and now Sicko on his r?sum?, Moore is perhaps the most outspoken filmmaker contemporary America has seen. For over a decade and half, Moore has stalked the devious American bureaucracy and corrupt corporations with a rage.

In Sicko, it is the private health-care system of America that has caught his eye. And what a sick system it is! Here are doctors who ask individuals with chopped fingers to choose between a $60,000 middle finger and a $12,000 ring finger. Hospitals that drop off patients in infirmary garbs in the middle of the street.

Insurance policies that decline applicants for being thin or fat or. err. simply liable to illness. And a government that touts the heroism of its fire-fighters but denies them their medical dibs.

Moore may have you believe that the US is barely better than a third world country on this matter. But it is astounding that the country that spends the highest amount on health system in the world holds the pathetic position of 37th in WHO's ranking. Moore's intention, then, is to expose the shadiness of this system and demonstrate, in a basic way, that there is an alternative.

Analysts will be disappointed that this alternative comes only in the form of romanticised trips to Canada, UK, France, and Cuba. More debate on the inferiority of Moore's polemics will inevitably follow, even though everyone will agree that he is onto something here. But consider this: his methods have made the custodians of this system go berserk. In other words, it works! Capitalists are terrified of being subjected to his ethical gaze, and now even the US Treasury Department hopes to curb him with legal impediments.

Moore has found something that affects Americans in a more general, direct way, and perhaps for that reason, critics will make less controversy out of this film. It's a good thing that Moore has decided this time around to stay out of the picture a bit more. Although a master confrontationalist, he isn't hounding anyone in Sicko.

Instead we get testimonies from ordinary people who have lost and laboured for the sake of profit. Perhaps his personality, for once, will not overshadow the issue.

But he is there, zany and in-your-face as ever, a modern manifestation of the medieval jester, calling kings fools. For all his foibles, no one better represents the American conscience at the moment.