Fahrenheit 911

Those who follow the news closely will find little new here - the questionable election victory in Florida, Bush's slacking in office pre-9/11, the business connections between his family and the bin Ladens, the profiteering opportunities brought by a war on Iraq, the breaches of civil liberties in the Patriot Act, the lies about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction and links to al Qaida, have all been documented before, and the footage of the Bush administration used in the film has been compiled mostly from standard media outlets. What makes 'Farenheit 9/11' stand out is its overwhelming concentration of information which, while shrewdly editorialised and certainly more convincing in some parts than in others, represents in its totality a devastating indictment of the current Republican government - and unlike, say, the coverage of events by network news, Moore's feature format allows him to make a point at some length, developing it from a nipping soundbite into a full-jawed mauling. It is one thing to know that Bush was attending a photo opportunity in an elementary school class when he was informed that the second tower had been hit and that the US was under attack, but it is another thing altogether to see the seven agonising minutes of inaction that followed, as Bush continued to read 'My Pet Goat' - and while some viewers may take exception to Moore's pointless attempt to reconstruct what was going on in the president's mind during this time, the long, leisurely focus on Bush's befuddled facial expression is a damaging image that the Republicans will find very difficult to dispel from the public's consciousness now that Moore has implanted it there.