Movie Review: AFTF

A couple of days ago I watched the authorized director’s cut of America: Freedom to Fascism (available on Google video). The Aaron Russo documentary looked like promising at first, but in the end was very dissatisfying. The documentary deals with how ever since 1913 America has been slowly turning fascist. Specifically the film talks about the illegality of income tax, the evil IRS and how bankers rule the world. The movie seems to be tailored to delusional capitalists that want to see someone more capitalist than themselves in hopes of feeling better.

The whole film is badly edited and badly composed. Random black screens with quotes and text are inserted through out. They interrupt the flow at illogical places and are never consistent as to the narrator reading them or not reading them. Aaron tries to narrate the movie himself, much like Moore does in his documentaries, except Aaron comes of as unintelligent, highly biased and flippant. The only good part of the film was not having to listen to the standard narrator voice at first. However, you soon realize that Aaron has no voice acting skill and his constant nagging becomes annoying.

As an interviewer and debater Russo lacks even the most basic competence. He forms arguments like “American has a central bank like the commi bastards in USSR” and then goes on about how it is bad to have a private bank running the United States. I don’t think he understands a basic principle of the communist central banks: it is controlled by the state and thus the people. When interviewing public figures he does not listen to them and gives himself more speaking time than the people he is interviewing. The point of interviewing a public figure and then showing more footage of yourself talking than the public figure escapes me.

To make matters worse, Russo constantly boasts about being a famous, award winning director. I think the random woman in the first street interview says it best:

“Russo: My name is Aaron Russo I produced the mo…

Woman: is this a joke; am I on a gag show?”

I do not recommend this video at all, and the only reason it has gotten any stars is because it is available for free on Google. Aaron Russo does not belong directing “documentaries” he is better as a random person on American are NOT stupid.