Collective – 6.5

Bravo to the journalists of Sports Gazette who doggedly exposed scandal in the Romanian health system. Bravo to the young Minister of Health who tried to clean up the scandal. And bravo to the filmmaker who somehow managed to record the private deliberations of both. But as a film, this came across as an amateurish rough draft: slow, repetitive, lacking drama, in need of context and focus.  The scandal meandered from diluted biocides to bribery and kickbacks to unqualified hospital management to wrongful accreditation to Trump-like politics. The villains remained offscreen. There was a death, but the question, was it suicide, murder or an accident, was never answered. The film gave us an interesting, if depressing, view of Romania; but I can’t fathom why it is #2 on Time’s Top Ten for the year instead of the far superior, in every way, Athlete A.