Film Reviews

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

• Rating:
• Director: Robert Greenwald
• Starring: Don Hunter
• Details: US, 95mins, PG.

Getting the truth out of Wal-Mart employees was never going to be easy since the tight-lipped giant retail company keeps a close eye on its staff and even has it's own anti-union response team with their own private jet that can be at any given store in hours to quell any rumours of dissidents in its ranks. But if anyone can do it, Robert Greenwald can. After delivering equally impressive documentaries Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War and Outfoxed (a documentary on the right-wing politics of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News), Greenwald turns his attention to one of the biggest chain stores in the world. Constantly assailed for paying less than the living wage, its single-minded eradication of a union and its expectance of its staff to work overtime without pay, Wal-Mart still continues to grow and multiply and, as Greenwald more than hints at throughout his documentary, mushrooms like a virus around the country, killing any small businesses it happens across. Businesses like Jon and Don Hunter's hardware store have had to shut down after 43 years, as they can't compete with the low price of Wal-Mart who opened down the road. Never as boisterous a documentary maker as his counterpart Michael Moore (you won't see Greenwald riding past the White House in a van pontificating through a loud speaker, staying behind his camera throughout), he still never flinches from his own political standpoint and lets his interviewees get his point across. He can be heavy-handed at times - he uses a Bruce Springsteen song over a montage of empty businesses and distressed-looking proprietors - but his documentaries are known for the deluge of interesting information and ease of accessibility and Wal-Mart is no different. It'll make you think twice about shopping in Dunnes Stores and you may feel inclined to stand outside shaking a red-painted left fist in the air.

Review by Gavin Burke