Greedy Lying Bastards

We call our House of Commons proceedings Punch and Judy: but the climate-change deniers on Fox News are Punch on steroids. It's a chilling and depressing picture.

What’s fresh here is the tone – rude, blunt and bordering on shrill. This is a less in-your-face Michael Moore-style take on this subject.

Collated for momentum, the film’s many interviews, wide-ranging archival footage and montage of modern ecological disasters form a blunt but carefully positioned instrument. And despite a bit of Michael Moore-style nonsense at the end the tightly edited narrative displays a reach (nine countries) and clarity of composition that hold the attention.

There’s a lot to be angry about. And though Rosebraugh shines a light on plenty of jaw-dropping corruption, it plays out like a shrill rallying cry without catharsis for the already initiated.

On the downside, Rosebraugh’s own film is too self-righteous and his attempts to play a humour-challenged, lightweight version of Michael Moore in front of the camera is a misfire. The climate-change deniers are comforting, though obviously wrong. Greedy Lying Bastards is grating, even if it’s right.

Rosebraugh’s arguments are sound and his heart is in the right place, but his execution is self-defeating.

The film’s zippy graphics are a treat, but its zippy arguments are slipshod.