Wal-Mart Expose To Screens in November

I can smell it brewing…can you? That at once intoxicating and nauseating feeling that arises from the pit of your stomach when you just know that the crap is going to hit the fan?

Brave New Films has taken aim at the top for their first production, a Robert Greenwald documentary called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices. His other works Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, and Uncovered: The War on Iraq have made some waves and BNF is betting that this one will as well.

WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight goliath. From a family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents bring the intensely personal stories of an assault on families and American values.

Rather than showcasing Wal-Mart as a company that upholds American family values (as it is so fond of saying of itself), this documentary purports that with their lack of respect and fair pay to associates, cut throat business tactics and propensity for censorship, the mega-retailer in fact undermines everything that America holds dear. This isn’t exactly news. Wal-Mart is continually under fire from corporate watchdogs, consumer advocacy groups and worker’s rights associations. Stories of the “big box store” invasion, the detrimental effects on local business and a host of other evil corporation badness abound. The High Cost of Low Prices may be nothing more than a regurgitation of all anti-Wal-Mart news that came before it, making about as much use as a third grade essay to a university professor to anyone that’s been paying attention to the situation over the years.

While over at the site, be sure to check out both the production blog and the WM*TV spots. It’s hard not to laugh at the comedic little skits so laced with sarcasm that they border on the absurd. I have no illusions of this being a balanced documentary about Wal-Mart’s business practices, as it’s obvious that Greenwald has quite a hate-on for the mighty corp., but I do hope that the film doesn’t descend to the type of raving-lunacy-tossing-accusations-at-everything-that-moves sort of documentary that makes me grind my teeth. I want to see some good film-making, not mindless slander.

Let the mudslinging begin November 13th.