Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Directed by Robert Greenwald

I have to admit, I have a bias with this film. I detest Wal-Mart and haven’t shopped there for over a year. Pretty much any reason why is contained within this incredibly biased documentary, which comes to us from the director of other politically motivated documentaries such as “Outfoxed” and “Uncovered”. I worked at Wal-Mart a few years ago, and I still think it was the most soul-crushing, unfair, creepy, cult-ish workplace I’ve ever been in, and I’ve worked for some pretty crazy people and places.

In it’s attempt to persuade you, this essay throws everything at you including the kitchen sink. From the tales of corporate handouts, unfair business practices, what it does to the economies of small towns, to the sweatshops they operate in China, Greenwald has gone to great lengths to make his case, and I have to say for the most part he does a good job. Even though it seems the filmmakers are pretty far left of the spectrum, the film allows many of the subjects to make it clear they are very pro-capitalism, just against those who cheat and take advantage of every loophole, and bully everyone else even at the expense of a poor public perception.

The biggest strength of the film is that it has a surprisingly clear, very smooth narrative, and doesn’t rely on talking heads to make his case. The film follows personal stories of shops in small towns, exploring what happens before and after a Wal-Mart comes to town, when workers try to start a union, and contains many interviews with store managers who explain in support of other Wal-Mart workers how the many allegations against Wal-Mart are not only true, but systemic. I can honestly say it’s informative, and not so much the jingoistic socialist love-in I expected it to be.

That isn’t to say it isn’t without its faults. It is populist to a fault, drives many points into the ground, and obviously panders to Republicans at many places to try and broaden the potential viewing audience. That’s not a bad idea, especially when so many of Wal-Mart’s victims are in the small conservative towns, but when you package the DVD with an insert advertising a bunch of Bush-bashing DVDs, and in your special features show your office with the big framed Che Guevara poster in the background, you’re opening yourself up to making those same people think you’re trying to trick them. The film also seems to put each allegation on equal footing as the rest, as if an environmental fine in North Carolina is just as bad as enslaving Chinese workers and undergoing a massive and expensive campaign to spy on their own employees. Still, despite its faults, if you generally agree with the films ideas, you might want to pick it up and share it with others.

The DVD contains a condensed version of the film, a short ‘making of’, some awful Wal-Mart parody commercials (a few of them featuring James Cromwell), and an audio commentary. I kind of enjoyed the audio commentary. It’s moderately interesting in the sense that Greenwald talks up his somewhat clichéd techniques. He has one of those very listenable, deliberate, somewhat gravely voices – reminds me of Marvel’s Stan Lee. It almost didn’t matter to me what he was talking about. Finally are a few shorts of stories in Britain, and of course the famed story of the Wal-Mart in Quebec which was shut down in retaliation for successfully starting a union. – Goon