In the space of merely a few years, director Michael Moore has seen his reputation morph from "the guy who made documentary films truly popular" to "the guy who plays fast and loose with the truth." His moment of greatest triumph at the box office — "Fahrenheit 9/11," which raked in some $120 million, an unprecedented sum for a documentary — was also something of a failure since its target, U.S. President George W. Bush, was re-elected several months after the film's release.
Moreover, the film's success impacted Moore's career in several ways: One, he could no longer employ the ambush-interview tactics he'd made a trademark — any politician or businessman knew to drop everything and flee at the mere sight of a portly man in a baseball cap wielding a microphone; and two, his overt entry into the political arena meant his films were put under the microscope more than they had been before, and many people took issue with his selective presentation and massaging of the facts.
That hasn't changed in Moore's latest, "Sicko," which is a stinging indictment of America's broken and patently unfair health-care system. Moore has an easy target — how else can you describe a medical-insurance system where the profit-driven goal is to not pay for patients' care? — but he still can't refrain from loading the dice.