Power Trip

Intelligent, revealing, and sometimes hilarious.

A skillful assemblage of newsreel clips, cartoons ridiculing the American interlopers, television commercials and interviews with power officials and ordinary Georgians. It gives new and darker meaning to that comfy adage "We're all connected."

Made with deft evenhandedness, Paul Devlin's accomplished film plays almost like a fictional drama, containing suspense, comedy and some colorful characters.

If the documentary has a star, it's pony-tailed AES exec Piers Lewis, who had the impossible job of getting Georgians to actually pay for their electricity.

Devlin tells his story without bias but with shards of gallows humor.

To its enormous credit, doesn't cast the conflict as cut-and-dried exploitation. It presents something altogether more complex--too complex, unfortunately, for an 85-minute documentary to elucidate perfectly.

An instructive account of the perils of attempting to privatize decrepit public utilities in countries with stagnant economies.