Vicki S. Nikolaidis There are so many errors in this documentary it should be categorized as fiction. I am writing this from Greece and the line about Greece and dictatorships is totally misleading. There was for a short period a terrible time when the military junta was in power, but it is important to remember the junta was initiated by Kissinger and supported by the USA. The script is quite muddled because it seems quotes from those appearing in the film have been clipped in order to present the view of the authors. Too much emphasis was on congratulating economists for the prizes they have won rather than offering new analysis on the issues. A range of views was not available in the documentary. The other flaws are too numerous to list. The book has even more.

Vishal Agrawal The overall idea of the documentary is to show how 'market' is evolving globally. Its in 3 parts. 1 part shows the market in the era of communism, depression and socialism. 2 part shows the opening of domestic markets in 70s and 80s and third part shows the cross border exchange of goods, ideas meaning 'globalization'. The over all attitude is very positive and politically neutral. The best part is that all economic changes are shown with political point of views and so they become more meaningful and easy to understand. Highest order economists and politicians are interviewed like Clinton, Thatcher, Hayek etc. Its not a Bible Sermon as I found this documentary a lil harsh on central planning issue. Keynes is compared with Marx and Lenin. They are completely different in their approaches and are very successful politicians/economists. Capitalism isn't working as well and so open market seems to be not the 'real solution' either. I really wonder what people have against Marx. Whatever Marx said is absolutely right. The real solution has to come from communism as Capitalism is losing ground because of the hoarding nature of human beings. We live in groups and community solutions are the real solutions for us. Anyways. It is a brilliant learning experience. Watch it if you wanna learn.

howToDie One thing notable about this movie is a remarkable collection of interviews with a number of international textbook economists, shadow politicians, and powerful tycoons. Take Dr Milton Friedman for example. What other popular presentation would boast 20 plus minutes of footage of this iconic economist? But leaving the entertaining visual impact of headshots of the smart, the rich and the powerful, there's not much else positive to say about this 6 hour film which is as ridiculously long as it is ridiculously fictitious. The thesis of the movie can be summarised as "the only economic system which guarantees long term economic prosperity and political stability is free market". This controversial claim has never been settled in the academic circles, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_capitalism#Market_failures for example. So, it is no surprise that the inherent weakness of the thesis invites the extensive use of *weaker forms of arguments* to advance their position including (a) omission or downplaying historic facts contradicting the thesis (e.g. the Nazi Germany was a free market economy, the Great Depression happened under free market conditions, the communist USSR had marginal poverty rates while the free market USA never went down past double digits), (b) failure to mention more plausible explanations of surveyed historic events (e.g. the dramatic fall in prices for copper, the major source of income for Chile, and the CIA efforts in destabilising the political situation during the Salvador Allende term), (c) trivialization (e.g. the suggestion that the visit of a *free-market revolutionary* Margaret Thatcher to Poland in 1989 ultimately led to Poland independence),(d) false claims (e.g. removing price controls in India resulted in less red tape)(e) fantasies (e.g. a Soviet defector who finally revealed to the West that the USSR was economically doomed was illegally transported across the boarder by two British individuals in a car boot)(d) claims lacking substantiation / causal explanation (e.g. the Polish shock therapy worked while the Russian did not despite similar political situation) (g) conflating ideas (e.g. balancing the budget in Bolivia which brought economic stability had nothing to do with the movie's thesis)(h) conclusions which do not follow (e.g. the Russian financial crisis 1998 gave the country the second chance)So although the movie fails in presenting a coherent logical support for the thesis, it also succeeds remarkably (according to its IMDb ratings) in persuading the uninformed viewers that free markets and resulting globalisation is the only panacea for economic and political ailment. In fact the movies is so bad, it could be a class-room case study of successful public indoctrination. Summary: avoid unless you are in the process of writing an essay on corporate/government propaganda.

anuragkjain This movie is a prescribed study material in one of the courses at my b-school. Even though I was aware of general macro and micro-economic principles, I never thought much about the Economy in the political sense. This documentary drives home an important point: Economic policy is slave to politics.I was totally taken aback by the number of examples and the extent of re-creating the scenarios that takes place. The soundtrack is really superb, which helps in no small measure. Inspired by Commanding Heights, I just finished reading Hayek's Road to Serfdom and it was a treat and an eye-opener to the thought-processes more than half a century back! If you want to understand the world better, this movie comes a 10/10 recommended!