Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen, the sisters who directed the film, begin with the assumption that we've all seen Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth." We need no more convincing that global warming is real (anyone who thinks otherwise is either dumb or on the oil industry's payroll), but "The 11th Hour" is determined to tell us how bad things are.
The power of DiCaprio, one of the film's producers, has drawn a sizable array of experts, from physicist Stephen Hawking to Kenyan activist (and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner) Wangari Maathai. These talking heads tackle the subject from every angle - scientific, political, economic and social. They make the compelling and convincing case that if we human beings don't change our ways soon, we're doomed. As George Carlin once said, decrying the arrogance of the environmentalists' motto "Save the Planet," "the planet isn't going anywhere - we are."
OK, I'm a liberal who agrees with everything being said here. So why am I not moved by "The 11th Hour"?
Part of it is I'm not the audience that needs to be convinced. But mostly it's because the movie is presenting its case in such a uniformly insistent tone, as the directors pile on one voice of doom after another. Meanwhile, Jean-Pascal Beintus' score acts like the finger poking me in the chest and saying, "See? See?" It reminds me of my reaction when Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson debated Sean Hannity about the war in Iraq: He's right, of course, but does he have to shout so much?
Only in the last 15 minutes does "The 11th Hour" provide what we need: information about what is being done and what can be done to fix things. Some of our smartest minds are working on sustainable design, ideas for living that not only can help stop pollution but look really cool - DiCaprio-level cool. More of that forward thinking could make watching "The 11th Hour" not feel as if we were already into the 12th.
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The 11th Hour
* WHERE: Broadway Centre Cinemas.
* WHEN: Opens today.
* RATING: PG for some mild disturbing images and thematic elements.
* RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes.
* BOTTOM LINE: Wind power can help fight global climate change, but this talky documentary isn't what the scientists had in mind.

