AN UNREASONABLE MAN

Year: 2006
USA: IFC First Take
Cast: Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, Howard Zinn
Directors: Henriette Mantel, Steve Skrovan
Country: USA
USA: 122 mins
USA Release Date: 2 February 2007 (Limited Release)


Synopsis

In 1966, General Motors, the most powerful corporation in the world, sent private investigators to dig up dirt on an obscure thirty-two year old public interest lawyer named Ralph Nader, who had written a book critical of one of their cars, the Corvair. Provoking a national scandal after the smear campaign was exposed, Ralph Nader was catapulted into national prominence and he established himself as the leader of the modern Consumer Movement.

Over the next thirty years and without ever holding public office, Nader built a legislative record that is the rival of any contemporary president. Many things we take for granted such as seat belts, airbags and product labeling are mostly due to the efforts of Ralph Nader and his citizen groups.

Today, even among former friends and allies, he is an outsider regarded by most people as the man who gave the country George W Bush to whom his name will forever be irrevocably linked.

How did this happen? Is he really to blame for George W Bush? Who has stuck by him and who has abandoned him? Has our democracy become a consumer fraud? After being so right for so many years, how did he seem to go so wrong?

AN UNREASONABLE MAN traces the life and career of Ralph Nader, one of the most unique, important, and controversial political figures of the past half century.