Riverview Movie Night

WAL-MART: THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE is a feature length documentary that uncovers a retail giant's assault on families and American values.

The film dives into the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to fight a goliath. A working mother is forced to turn to public assistance to provide healthcare for her two small children. A Missouri family loses its business after Wal-Mart is given over $2 million to open its doors down the road. A mayor struggles to equip his first responders after Wal-Mart pulls out and relocates just outside the city limits. A community in California unites, takes on the giant, and wins!

By Owen Gleiberman November 1, 2005

"With little fanfare, Robert Greenwald has become one of the most incisive activist filmmakers in America. Like his superb eve-of-the-election docs, Uncovered: The War on Iraq and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Wal-Mart is an investigative outcry driven by stringent reporting rather than attitude. Mixing statistics and employee testimony, Greenwald details business practices that provoke a gathering outrage: the coerced unpaid overtime, the foreign sweatshop labor, the health- insurance packages (now being upgraded) that have left thousands of employees to rely on Medicaid, the sucking dry of mom-and-pop stores."

By Kenneth Turan November 4, 2005

"'Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price' is an engrossing, muckraking documentary about the retail giant that's been called "the world's largest, richest and probably meanest corporation." But if you're expecting an angry diatribe, you're going to be disappointed. Instead, the predominant feeling coming off the screen in the latest film from director Robert Greenwald is a kind of baffled disenchantment and sadness."

By Anita Gates November 4, 2005

"'The High Cost of Low Price' makes its case with breathtaking force. Mr. Scott of Wal-Mart declined to speak on camera, Mr. Greenwald says. The company is worried enough about this film and growing opposition elsewhere that it has hired high-powered former presidential advisers and set up a public relations ''war room'' to deflect and respond to criticism."

By Ty Burr November 11, 2005

"The movie's masterstroke is to avoid interviewing the usual anti-globalist suspects and let solid, hard-working middle Americans speak. These testimonies, taken from towns and cities across the country, are cripplingly blunt. ... By the final credits you may want to picket Sam Walton's grave."