After he failed to become President of the United States of America in the 2000 elections due to a variety of reasons, Al Gore seemed to disappear. When he began teaching classes at Columbia University, a few pictures of him surfaced, revealing that the man had become bearded and...well, corpulent. Clearly, Gore was searching for a sense of direction in his life.

He found purpose again when he renewed his efforts to educate the public about global warming. Because the issue is so politicized for the wrong reasons, Gore has had to refer to the situation as “climate crisis” in order to avoid partisan heckling. Gore travels around the world with a slideshow presentation that he created several years ago and updates constantly with new information about how global warming is accelerating destructive trends.

Several moviemakers approached Gore about turning his slideshow presentation into a documentary. The participants built a small arena with a huge backdrop screen and several plasma monitors for a series of Gore lectures to ordinary folk. These recorded lectures became the framework for An Inconvenient Truth. The movie also incorporates TV news footage, a clip from an episode of Futurama (one of Gore’s daughters was on the animated show’s writing staff), documentary footage of scientists collecting data in the field, and images taken directly from the slideshow.

While An Inconvenient Truth features biographical moments from Gore’s life that paints him as a moral crusader (at one point, he is shown unveiling a cover-up that took place at NASA), the movie isn’t really about AL GORE THE ENVIRONMENTALIST. The Al Gore in the movie could’ve been anyone who cares about humanity’s relationship to Earth, though because of who he is, Gore attracts additional attention to an issue that may determine the viability of life on our planet.

I am a bit reluctant to use the term “thriller” to describe An Inconvenient Truth since “thriller” is often used to describe exciting or fun/exhilarating movies, but in this case, I felt like I was watching a “thriller” because of the urgency of Gore’s message. Earth itself is not dying, but human activity is destroying life at alarming rates. The facts speak for themselves, but for me, one of the most heart-breaking moments was learning that polar bears are drowning because it is difficult for them to find ice on which to rest while swimming in oceans. If feeling like crying about animals makes me a “bleeding heart liberal”, then I have to wonder why not everyone is a “bleeding heart liberal”.

Yunda Eddie Feng