Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Director: Robert Greenwald
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.5
Harsh critique of the capitalist monstrosity Wal-Mart, a company that is both ethically and morally bankrupt in the way it exploits its employees, damages the environment, neglects its customers and eliminates competition (among other things). Greenwald is careful not to implicate the public - who could actually cripple the company by, of all things, simply not shopping there (but our nature forces us to want cheap things and forget about 'why' they're cheap) - and builds up sympathy by interviewing families whose small businesses were eliminated by Wal-Mart's "competitive pricing" - it's a strong-arm approach, but for the most part it works. The brute force of Greenwald's fitting disdain should be compared/contrasted with the overview of corporate psychosis in the excellent documentary The Corporation - this type of expose could be done about a number of American companies.
