It was a bizarre merging of worlds at the New York SiCKO premiere, a theater packed with media A-listers and twenty-something billionaires watching tales of healthcare woe elbow-to-elbow with activists in matching slogan t-shirts. “Could it have been any more didactic?” sniffed one media patriciate as chanting nurses paraded through the lobby during the closing credits.

Yes, it could have. Michael Moore hasn’t catapulted to the rank of documentary film’s most profitable (and controversial) director by embracing subtlety. Like its predecessors, SiCKO lays it on as thick as a Morton’s rib eye. But this time, Moore approaches his topic with a welcome gravity, cutting down on the scene-hogging and winking camera tricks that gave Fahrenheit 9/11 its almost infuriating (even for Bush haters) smugness. Here, Moore sticks to the basic formula, offering a hybrid of contrite interviews with former insurance employees, extreme close-ups of smoking gun documents, and personal testimonials from distraught victims who sacrificed fingers and babies to the commodification monster of privatized healthcare. The climax is a doozy: sick 9/11 rescue workers voyaging to Guantanamo in search of affordable medical treatment. It’s enough to make the heart of any well-heeled Gothamite swell (at least, for that minute or two before the Blackberry goes off).

Surprisingly, at times the film seemed almost catered to the East Coast intelligentsia crowd. When interviewing Midwestern subjects, Moore is careful to establish their solid middle class credentials — one woman nearly bankrupted by cancer is established as a “former newspaper editor,” while her children “went to good schools like the University of Chicago.” The praise he heaps on other countries (Look! The French even get government-subsidized nannies!) borders on unqualified worship – one Canadian whispered during the after party that plenty of her countrymen still drive across the border for American care if they can afford it.

Still, the number of shaking heads and outraged expressions after the screening were a good indicator that Moore’s message struck home. Or maybe it was the dawning realization that, someday, every one of us will get sick and be forced to enter this medical system. Even the billionaires.

This review originally appeared in Radar Online.