Koch Brothers Exposed (2012)

Very disappointing...

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A documentary and a position piece, editorial or essay are very different. And at best this might be one of those latter 3 but doesn't approach being a documentary. Documentaries are supposed to be like news (not todays news but the hypothetical version taught in journalism schools) neutral in tone, with no intended outcome or reaction from its audience and uncolored presentation of verified facts and evidence. It may have a message or idea to offer but it cant be jammed down the viewers throat but realized or refuted by themselves. I didn't go to J school but I think even position pieces and essays are supposed to have supporting evidence or something showing some reason for their opinion, by that standard Im not even sure this qualifies as that. A more apt title mighta been The Koch Brothers slandered or libeled, I always forget which is written and which spoken, and drenched in innuendo, whatever the reality or anyones opinions of these men this film offers no credible evidence or even semi plausible conjecture on the subject.

i've seen the same sort of thing come out of the right. makes many claims and assumptions; provides no proof of anything. mindless dribble that will only pour fuel on the fire. tailored toward the unthinking masses yet highly unlikely to spur them to action. jumps around from one thing to the next. no continuity.i wouldn't say that it flat out tells lies, but it doesn't make it easy for a thinking person to believe any of it, despite how much they might want to believe it. we the people must be better than this if we are truly to overcome the powerful influences of money. then again, sometimes it is easier to just start bashing and throwing things.the irony is that the same people who would be offended/angered by this film would probably eat up the same type of garbage which supports their own way of thinking. in either case, nobody is really looking to find out the truth and nobody cares about doing what is right, except in their own eyes....and that is precisely why humanity is doomed.

In the tradition of socialist propaganda like Der Ewige Jude, the film doesn't even try to make any rational arguments for why its targets are bad - it uses juxtaposition, emotional footage, blurbs taken completely out of context, and outright fabrications.This hate-u-mentary does not "expose" anything that the Koch family itself doesn't make public, and has been making public for many decades. For example, David H Koch was the Libertarian Party's VP candidate in 1980, running on a platform, as summed by his Wikipedia entry, "to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE". Does anyone honestly believe any of this was a secret?!The worst thing you could truthfully say about the Koch brothers is that "they gave money to anti-communist organizations, and some anticommunists also happened to be racists" - the latter is not something the Koch brothers had any power to change. This is guilt by (very distant) association! Like the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", a person who has many connections can be connected to pretty much anybody else.The film talks about Koch Industries being a "major polluter", but it doesn't talk about what they produce, and it doesn't even try to put anything in context. This is like describing Shakespeare as a major waste of paper, or Mozart as a major polluter of silence! It completely glosses over the fact that Koch Industries produce products that are used by hundreds of millions of people, and that they donate billions of dollars to medical research, the arts, and other apolitical charities. It doesn't even try to analyze the policies proposed by free market environmental organizations like FREE (Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment), which the Koch brothers support - who needs science when you already have an angry mob?This film should be classified as "hate porn" - it doesn't need to explain WHY its viewers should be aroused, because their reptilian brain already reacts to the subject a certain way. People who are not drunk on class-warfare prejudice and are capable of critical thinking will study the scientific and economic ideas that the Koch brothers promote and think for themselves.Socialists are welcome to criticize those ideas constructively, but so far they've done nothing but lie, cheat, steal, and kill their opposition.

The Conservatives hate George Soros and the Liberals hate the Koch Brothers. Which investor is worse depends on your bias. Coming from a Libertarian, the Koch brothers and Soros seem to be in a dead race for the most despicable humans. Robert Greenwald's Koch Brothers Exposed is a documentary that was born from a viral video online, and in sixty minutes, tries to tackle the macro issue of their heavy-handed ideology and how they have harmed and may continue to harm the United States as a whole.This is a hatchet-job in every sense of the word, yet one wonders if the Koch brothers have taken a hatchet to their own job, flaunting their bigotry and fighting to strip away benefit programs from Americans who desperately need them. They've continued their attempts to abolish Social Security, raise the retirement age, and spread false claims about many government programs. They've fueled their gas tank by funding politicians, news pundits, much of the media, and several organizations, along with crippling certain environments and slanting much of the research done by universities to fit their ideology.People like this show me nothing but how corrupt, unconvincing, and outdated the two-party system of America is. Are we supposed to be proud of this and are we supposed to shamelessly canonize it? Republicans and Democrats alike have proved their incompetence by not only limiting Americans in several ways, but also, showing us that behind the scenes is where most everything takes place and that we as the 99% are fortunate to see the little brief outtakes and clips on the networks. I usually sneer and roll my eyes at random conspiracy theories I find on the internet, yet with all the talk about Republicans preventing people from voting and Democrats finding another freedom to limit, I begin to see why one would believe there's more than meets the eye.The men got so filthy rich because they inherited so much of their father's wealth, who ran a successful oil business in communist Russia. They took some money and started their own business not long after in the United States, and now have a combined net worth of $31 billion. We meet several different people living in different parts of the United States, clearly struggling to make end's meet, and usually relying on Social Security, food stamps, welfare, or something to assure they'll see the sun of tomorrow. Greenwald then shows us how the Koch Brothers, Charles and Dave, two filthy rich venture capitalists who run Koch Industries, a massive company that specializes in the production of various chemicals, live with several multimillion dollar mansions in several parts of the country. Seeing these people, already fearing for their financial position in America, be tested by a large corporation and its ambition to deprive the same kind of people of their deserved benefits is a shameful act. I've long been a supporter of Capitalism, and on the contrary to many, I think it in its most basic and moderate form isn't greed but almost common sense; what the Koch brothers are doing is simply fulfilling their greediness in the world. Even Charles Koch states that they don't care what happens because at the end of the day, it's all about profits, right? The final part of this brief excursion is we see a small local community that has been impacted negatively by the tycoons, whose factories are one of the top-ten companies in the country that pollute deadly amounts of smoke in the air. Their factories spew thick clouds of repugnant smog that can cause asthma, cancer, and at worst, death. David Koch is an outspoken prostate cancer survivor, donating millions and millions to cancer research, yet one of his many factories is now causing the problem; one of the most disgusting cases of hypocrisy I have yet to see.Koch Brothers Exposed feels like a "greatest hits" CD of the most deplorable things the brothers have done over the course of their lifetime, and because of that, the editing and overall cutting job is messy and somewhat fast-paced for a documentary. But the film proposes too many issues and too many facts to be deemed as senseless propaganda. Something truly resonated with me when I came to the conclusion that these men could potentially buy the government if they wanted to, and transport us back to the 1950's, where your freedoms were thin and your gender roles defined you as a whole.Starring: Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch, Bernie Sanders, Van Jones, and Bill McKibben. Directed by: Robert Greenwald.