Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore's documentary, which took the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2004, is squarely and expertly aimed at George W Bush's re-election prospects. Beginning with Dubya's extremely dubious victory in the 2000 campaign, the film swiftly moves on to the President's bewildered and frankly bizarre reaction to the 9/11 attacks. It traces his and his cronies' various links with rich and powerful Saudis (including the Bin Laden family); examines how anything remotely Middle Eastern was deliberately mixed up in terms of the public awareness in an attempt to shift the blame from Osama to Iraq; reveals the many atrocities visited upon that country during the second Gulf War and the ensuing occupation; and finally targets the average American voter with a moving reminder that US lives were being lost too. Though Moore's presence is everywhere to be felt, he is, mercifully, less visible and prone to facile hectoring than in Bowling for Columbine (though there's a nice sequence in which he buttonholes senators, inviting them to send their own offspring off to serve in Iraq. And while there's not that much that's new in his argument, the sheer weight of evidence and the immediacy of the footage on view make for powerful and righteous propaganda.