Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

The man has no woman, he has no money, he’s paranoid, he chain smokes to the point that it’s wonder he can breathe, I’m pretty sure he’s insane and if he doesn’t pay his rent soon he will add the title of ‘homeless’ to his laundry list of issues. This man is Michael Ruppert and Mr. Ruppert is a former Los Angeles Police officer and whistle blower who currently is writing books that nobody reads and composing music that nobody listens to, but chiefly what Mr. Ruppert is doing at present is giving everything he has to help and educate people who don’t want his help and have very little interest in being educated. It’s clearly driving him nuts.

The movie starts out informing us that director Chris Smith was researching a screenplay about the CIA smuggling drugs and if you’re going to research that issue then you need to talk to Michael Ruppert who blew that whole thing wide open some years ago. So my man apparently sets up a camera for his interview and instead of a few good tidbits about drug smuggling he got a bunch of other stuff, and thus this riveting documentary ‘Collapse’ was born.

In between taking drags of his endless cigarette Mr. Ruppert is telling the man behind the camera that we are in grave danger. The crux of Ruppert’s proclamation rests on the concept of ‘Peak Oil’. Simply put, the production of oil has passed its peak output and is now on the downside of the bell curve. Now if this decline in oil production was simply tied to the gasoline in our automobiles then this situation would still be bad but not nearly as dire, but as Michael Ruppert points out oil production is critical to almost everything we do. Plastics, food, rubber, electronics… all of these things, in addition to so much more is dependent on the plentiful production of oil and when this oil eventually runs out, sooner than later it would appear if you listen to Mr. Ruppert, society as we know will come to a screeching halt. Yes there are alternative methods of energy but they are either poorly thought out, somehow based on oil, exorbitantly expensive or are just plain stupid.

Damn if that’s not the good news. Ruppert informs us that he correctly predicted the economic collapse though even he didn’t think this collapse would be as sudden and as complete as it turned out to be, and truth be told the man doesn’t see how society is going to dig its way out of this one. There are too many of you people, note how I don’t include myself in the mix, and not enough resources to support all of you people and something has to give and it has to give very soon. It’s all over. But don’t panic! Stay Calm!

You see if you panic you will surely die, but if you stay cool and prepare for the short term and let things shake out… I’m guessing shaking out means losing a good number of you 6.5 billion resource sucking bastards… society will reorganize itself and the human race will soldier on. If you don’t panic. Just recognize that part of this preparation involves pissing on your lawn. I told you he was crazy.

Man… I love this guy. Michael Ruppert is now officially ‘one my guys’. It’s not easy to become one of my guys but this guy here, whether he desires it or not, is now one of my guys. I know that director Chris Smith probably had to weed through hours upon hours of footage of this cat to create the competent and gripping movie that he has shown us, but I wouldn’t have minded hearing everything this guy had to say. The point at this movie when this passionate, emotional lunatic became one of my guys wasn’t when he told me to go outside and pee on my lawn so my non-Monsanto seeds can grow but when he paused to make a point about President Obama. Apparently an epiphany of sorts had swept over my man and he had to pause before he spoke because he was about lay, and I quote, ‘some serious fucking shit’ on us. Anybody who tells me that they are about to lay ‘some serious fucking shit’ on me is speaking a language I understand and I’m going to listen, intently, to what they have to say.

Absorbing Michael Ruppert is a lot like absorbing Global Warming. Global Warming is a cold hard fact and anyone who says otherwise in an idiot. The debate, however, is whether or not Global Warming is an impending catastrophe or just the prattling of a bunch of eco loving tree huggers. Same with Michael Ruppert and his doomsday prophecies in this movie. I don’t think the man said anything in this movie, as far as the facts are concerned, that isn’t 100% true. The question would be do you buy into Ruppert’s analysis of these truths. Are these things that are clearly going on around us going to lead us to destruction, and soon, or are these prophecies just the rantings of a well-informed, well-educated madman?

He makes some compelling arguments, that’s for damn sure. And when the off-camera voice occasionally challenges one of his arguments he is quick with a counter. The man is an emotional basket case as there were times he just broke down and cried at the hopelessness of it all and I don’t know if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were really out to get him but now that Michael Ruppert is one of my guys, if he says Bush was out to get him, then dammit President Bush, back up off my guy. Interesting, informative and very entertaining ‘Collapse’ is something to see. Now excuse me because I have to go outside put some organically produced ammonium nitrate on my lawn.