After producing Outfoxed, a brutal expose of FOX Network's blatantly biased news broadcasting, Robert Greenwald turns his attention to another evil corporate mega-giant in Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Once again David slays Goliath in a documentary that has no pretense of being objective. But if you want the other side, all you need do is watch the laughable "happy face" promotional ads that Wal-Mart runs that attempt to portray Wal-Mart as a great place to rise up in the economic ladder and as a compassionate corporation concerned about the world and its environment. These have appeared in newspapers, on television, and are featured on a company website that supposedly offers the "unfiltered truth" about the Arkansas-based retailer.

That truth will be a hard sale in light of the research that Greenwald and his dedicated staff have conducted, often finding sources and leads through Google searches. There are plenty of disgruntled employees, former employees, and customers out there, though Greenwald discovered that almost no current employees would consent to going on camera for fear of losing their job. These fears are totally justifiable, judging from the testimony of former employees about their strong-arm tactics and Wal-Marts well-documented campaigns to keep their underpaid employees from unionizing.

Once widely admired for its innovative way of supplying lower cost commodities, Wal-Mart became controversial soon after founder Sam Walton died. The surviving Walton family heirs are now viewed as more evil than Bill Gates and Microsoft (especially in light of the fact that Gates contributes over 50% of his income to charity as opposed to the 1% contributed by the Waltons), and Wal-Mart's marketing plan violates the American dream of owning your own business and passing it on to future generations. The same cancerous pattern has occurred across America. Once welcomed into a community, the mom and pop downtown businesses soon go out of business, leaving only Wal-Mart's mega-store to furnish basic supplies.

Most of us are aware of this pattern since we've seen it happen in various locations. Greenwald effectively demonstrates the process by heading to Middlefield, Ohio to document the Hunter family's struggle to maintain their 43-year old H and H Hardware store in the face of Wal-Mart's grand opening. Founded by the grandfather and passed on to his son, inevitably the store sells its inventory and closes, but not before Greenwald's camera captures the old man carrying out his early morning routine of placing an American flag in front of the store. The once thriving downtown has become a ghost town, much like the scenario presented in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Striving to become more than the usual "talking heads" documentary, Greenwald attempts to use more tracking shots and shoot on location as much as possible, but the film remains very word heavy. There's a lot to cover besides the well-known pattern of putting mom and pop operations out of business, and current CEO H. Lee Scott provides the narrative structure via clips from a recent large corporate gathering. Greenwald relentlessly blasts Wal-Mart on multiple fronts from all over the country and overseas: unfair labor practices, cheating its employees, questionable environmental practices, cutting corners, creating criminal havens in its parking lots, and exploiting Chinese sweatshops--all to boost the company's bottom line.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price also shows clips from two grassroots campaigns in California and Arizona that successfully block the giant retailing chain from invading their turf while listing the names of several other communities doing the same. Making an unabashed plea for more to undertake similar steps to block the evil corporate empire, the film strongly suggests that citizens fight for the American dream. The film's initial distribution method is a remarkable study in modern grassroots campaigning itself, relying on word of mouth to spread via the Internet to locate private and semi-private screenings across the country.

Some will think the one-sided portrait is a 95-minute project in overkill while others will swallow every accusation without question, but that is more a viewer problem than the fault of the film.

It's well documented that corporate giants like Wal-Mart often procure unfair subsidies from local governments and possess other huge advantages not available to the average citizen. A documentary poking holes into this well-armed Goliath is long overdue, and it raises a number of tough questions that should challenge Wal-Mart. I rarely patronize Wal-Mart, as I find many of its zombified customers scary--like they just arrived from being extras in Deliverance. But after seeing this film, I'll likely look for another retailer the next time I need underwear.