An Unreasonable Man

Documentarians Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan recount the career of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, in an adoring hagiography that backs their interviews with Nader with stirring music and those of his detractors with melodramatic “dum-dum-DUM” rumbles. Mantel and Skrovan spend half their prolonged 123-minute running time on just the last seven years, tipping their hand to the movie’s agenda: to rehabilitate Nader in the eyes of angry lefties who blame him for “spoiling” the last two elections with his quixotic presidential campaigns, throwing (in their view) the victory to George W. Bush. Mantel and Skrovan have a different view, and their first hour, reminding us of Nader’s tireless efforts to reform the corporate culture, makes their case better than the movie’s increasingly defensive second half.