In theaters

FAHRENHEIT 9/11, written and directed by Michael Moore, 110 minutes, rated R.

The new Michael Moore movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” is one burning bush.

Currently the No. 1 film in America – and the first documentary to claim such a coup – the film is divisive, outrageous, important and troubling. It’s also funny and insightful, dark and misleading – a zeitgeist that has polarized audiences, leaving some cheering in the aisles and others crying foul in their seats.

As such, “Fahrenheit 9/11” has done exactly what it was intended to do. Currently showing at Movie City 8 in Bangor, the movie has launched a national discussion about the state of the world as influenced by the Bush administration. Some will agree with it; others will vilify it as propaganda. Bring on the debate.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a Michael Moore movie, with all that implies. It’s slanted and it’s biased, clearly aimed at hanging Bush by carefully assembling news reports from CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS,

as well as from newspapers and on-the-street interviews conducted by Moore himself.

Fair enough. Though conservatives might not want to admit it, Moore and his movies aren’t so far removed from, say, the tone of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, which daily slams the Left. Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox uses the same methodology. As such, “Fahrenheit” is what it unflinchingly is – pointedly never objective.

It also can’t be dismissed. What no sensitive, thinking person can deny is that “Fahrenheit 9/11” is filled with indelible, haunting images, with the Bush administration legitimately at the root of many of them.

The most troubling include documented footage of the Bush family’s indisputable ties to the Saudis, who like our president so much they have a friendly nickname for him – Bandar Bush – and to the bin Ladens, who once also called the Bushes their friends.

Other chilling moments include the seven minutes on Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush sat frozen in an elementary school in spite of being told twice by his staff that America was “under attack;” an elderly Baghdad woman crying for the dead and damning Americans for destroying her city; a dead baby tossed onto a pile of rotting corpses; a beheading shown at a distance; and one Lila Lipscomb, mother of Michael Pederson, a soldier killed in Karbala who entered the service at his mother’s urging. She thought it would offer her son more opportunities and a better life, when in fact it lead him to his death.

The grief Lipscomb expresses onscreen is unshakable, particularly during her pilgrimage to Washington, with her deep sense of guilt, frustration and loss overcoming her. It’s a scene that gives “Fahrenheit 9/11” the authentic dramatic punch it needs.

Perhaps because Moore feels the weight of his material, his film is less biting and jovial than what we’ve come to expect from the rabble-rousing director of “Bowling for Columbine” and “Roger & Me,” with Moore’s sobering narration growing increasingly spare as the movie unfolds.

Since fair play isn’t considered here, what’s missing are Bush’s accomplishments, particularly his shining hour in the sun, when the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon lay beneath his feet after three airplanes plowed them down. Finally rising to the occasion, he was indeed presidential when he mounted the ruins, gathered the troops around him and movingly bonded with a country still in shock. Fueled by the momentum, Bush essentially realized his greatest triumph in mass murder, Moore shows, only to squander it by going to war with Iraq.

After all, as Moore legitimately asks throughout the movie, where are Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Bush? Where are the nuclear and chemical warheads we were told time and again were our reason for going to war? Where are the weapons that were never found yet have ironically, without ever being detonated, cost thousands of people their lives?

As serious as it can be, “Fahrenheit 9/11” is hardly above taking cheap shots at Bush. For Moore, our president is a caricature, an easy individual to poke fun at, but then so are his chums Cheney, Rumsfeld and especially John Ashcroft, who actually breaks into song at one point and belts out a ballad he wrote himself, “Let the Eagle Soar.” It’s an astonishing moment of comedy.

The rich are to be scorned in Moore’s movie, but never more so than Bush, whose vacant expressions, trite soundbites, squirrelly eyes and utter lack of eloquence are constant sources of ridicule. Moore shows the president as a man more at home on his Texas ranch than he is leading the free world.

What I admire about “Fahrenheit” is the furor it’s causing. The movie abolishes apathy. No one who sees it will dispute the fact that the film sparked one hell of a conversation on the drive home.

As Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” proved, when the right movie comes along, when it finds its niche and hits its chord, the power of the medium is fully revealed and the importance of movies as an art goes unparalleled. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a captivating, entertaining movie that’s more factual than it is questionable. It’s not a documentary, per se, though it is a blistering opinion piece worthy of consideration.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.