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PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 8/17/07)

We're all going to die, but as the Conners sisters' persuasively damning eco-doc posits with all the subtlety of an Ice Age, that might be collectively. "Not only is it the 11th hour, it's 11:59," decries one of the more-sermonizing-than-talking heads within a smartly diversified, articulate line-up of scientists, environmentalists, professors, architects, economists, authors, a former CIA director, and co-producer and narrator Leonardo DiCaprio. Al Gore's inconvenient PowerPoint truths on global warming were frightening enough, and The 11th Hour broadens its edifying scope to connect not just the climate crisis, but all of Gaia's failing ecosystems (ocean and air pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, species extinction, etc.) with mankind's folly — specifically, capitalist greed. Sure, some might say these ideas are still being exhaustively (though inexplicably) debated as a political issue, but perhaps the film's greatest strength is in making its hysterical, activism-now urgencies an emotional issue. After all, we're told, it's not the self-healing earth we should be worried about as much as the obliteration of the human race itself. Understandably humorless, this bummer of a wake-up call ends with a surprisingly optimistic fanfare: a peek into the conservational future-tech that's already in development, practical advice to live a greener life, and a website to further educate the selflessly concerned. It's not yet too late, you dig?

 
That said, as The 11th Hour's message of Profound Importance warrants a four-star rating, the film itself does not. Scaled down from over 150 hours of interview footage, the 50-odd experts who appear on-screen have been reduced to surface-scratching sound bytes, each blandly shot against the same black backdrop. The exception is DiCaprio, who gets to overlook cityscapes and oceans, calling undue attention to his celebrity status. The rest is seen as either animated charts or rapidly edited stock footage that could have been randomly lifted from BBC's Planet Earth — natural disasters, coral reefs, incubating fetuses, Al Gore in that other movie (seriously!) — or maybe if it were shown in slo-mo to a Philip Glass score, it's Koyaanisqatsi. This is strictly pragmatic filmmaking escaped from a high school classroom, and though a work of such alarmingly dire content certainly doesn't require cinematic reinvention to stress its points, it makes for a harder sell to the summer multiplex crowds who'd rather eat popcorn than spinach.

– Aaron Hillis