The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (2009)

Most "short" films are not worthy of their own post. For this film I made an exception for two reason, 1. there is plenty to talk about, and 2. it is the favorite to win the documentary short film category at the Oscars next month.

First off, I think websites that project who they think will win without watching the film create false hope and hype around a mediocre [at best] film. I think the subject matter alone makes you want to see this film, at least I really wanted to see what it was about, and is probably the reason for its favoritism so far.

For readers of the blog that might not know, I worked in a semiconductor fabrication facility ["fab" for short] for almost two years. I went to college and came in as a supervisor of a team much like the one documented here. So when the gentleman in the bar speaks of the "college kid that comes in and tried to run the place" he is talking about someone much like me [negatively I might add].

So the documentary starts by giving a little background on why the factory is closing. By this I mean about 5 minutes... or less than you would get from 60 minutes, 20/20, or probably the CBS Evening News. It then spends about 35 minutes interviewing people. And this is the part that really gets me. They interview people that worked in the plant, but did not interview supervisors or any type of management. It was almost like they just hung out in the parking lot for a week interviewing anyone that wanted to complain about the situation. The comments were very skewed, and you can expect, and they completely disregarded the fact that the supervisors were also being laid off.

The almost took pity on them, but when they admit that they hated their jobs until they realized they were disappearing [much like some of the people that worked for me] it frustrated me. They placed the blame on the management and not the union or the economy which happened to be very large factors.

Take this film with a grain of salt, I have not seen the four films this is up against, but this is the worst I've seen from this category in several years.

Vote: 4/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1487120/

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