Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I don't mean to invoke the name of Harry Knowles in my reviews two weeks in a row, but in the same lengthy conversation in which he accused me of being too old to appreciate Lady in the Water (apparently most of America was also "too old" this past weekend), he also asked me a question I never thought another human being on this planet would ask me: "Have you seen a film called America: Freedom to Fascism?" My heart practically jumped out of my chest when he spoke these words.
I had just watched the film a couple of days earlier, and it had scared the crap out of me to such a degree that I was prepared to put it out of my mind until I wrote my review. Harry wasn¹t even sure he would or could write about it. We were in complete agreement on this movie. It looks like it was pieced together using a Commodore 64 computer. The graphics are terrible, the production value is non-existent, and the voiceover by filmmaker Aaron Russo sounds like a lung cancer patient on his last lung. But none of these things will stop the slow-building paranoia levels from simmering in your brain.
If you thought Michael Moore had an agenda with his documentaries, wait until you meet Russo, the movie producer responsible for such gems as The Rose and Trading Places, and the director of the 1989 bomb Rude Awakening. His film begins with a search for the actual law that requires Americans to pay federal income tax (I¹m sure Russo knew going into this project that no such law exits, but the search is still quite interesting).
He talks to tax attorneys, constitutional law experts, former IRS and FBI investigators, writers, anyone who can explain why we are shelling over huge percentages of our income to the federal government when there is no law saying we must. Russo interviews people on the street asking them, "What do you think your income tax pays for?" People assume it's for things like road building, schools, and social programs. But Russo says that income taxes in fact do nothing more than pay off the interest on the national debt.
What follows is Russo's smartly structured dissection of how the Federal Reserve and the world banking leadership has essentially changed the way this country a policing agent for the Fed (which, by the way, we learn is not a government agency, but a private group of bankers making decision about how much money is printed, which in turn effects interest rates, inflation, and all the other financial details that determine whether you will ever be able to buy a home or pay off your credit cards). Sound like the work of a paranoid conspiracy theorist? You bet it is. Does that mean he¹s wrong? Well, he succeeding in making me very nervous.
I could spend many paragraphs of this review detailing Russo's theories and revelations, but hear it directly from Russo in this film, which he narrates and occasionally shows up on camera interviewing various subjects. What some might find fascinating is that Russo doesn¹t lay the blame for the current situation on either left- or right-wing leaders. In his eyes, they are just as much pawns in this game as ordinary citizens. Russo may lose a few people when he gets into discussions of National Identity Cards and microchips under the skin, but the fact remains that these developments are reality. (The day when you¹d be walking down the street and a police officer can stop you and ask to see your "papers" is not a thing of the past any longer.)
Russo sees the United States as having lost its way, headed toward a police state, not so slowly but surely. As nothing more than an eye-opening look at the way financial institutions control our lives, this film is devastating enough, but Russo follows the natural pathways to the worldwide bigger picture. America: Freedom to Fascism is designed to overwhelm and frighten, and Mr. Russo should consider his mission accomplished.
Capone
