Chris Smith's simple documentary is basically an hour and a half of Michael Ruppert, a verbose but lucid prophet of the apocalypse. In a monologue touching on the price of oil, global warming, our endangered food supply and economic collapse, Ruppert is frighteningly persuasive. We've heard a lot of this before, but rarely from such a fascinating source.

Featuring: Michael Ruppert

Director: Chris Smith

Rating: Three stars out of five

If you don't think things are going badly -- that is, if you think they're going badly, but you don't think they're going badly enough -- meet Michael Ruppert. He's a former Los Angeles policeman and sometimes investigative reporter, a lucid, well-spoken and possibly paranoid prophet of the apocalypse. Michael Ruppert makes Michael Moore sound like Mr. Rogers.

"The only thing that amazes me is the speed with which things are falling apart," Ruppert says, lighting another cigarette -- he's a chain smoker, the sure sign of a confirmed pessimist -- and launching into yet another mini-lecture on the impending collapse. It begins with oil, comes around to the economic system, extends to food and water and ends up with people bartering seeds and gold and trying to hang on during the inevitable conflagration of crumbling cities, revolution and starvation.

Ruppert's is the voice of doom, and a disturbingly persuasive one, that holds centre stage in Collapse. This documentary by Chris Smith (American Movie, The Pool) started as an expose of the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in drug smuggling. That led him to Ruppert, who's been on to the CIA for a number of years. He has also, in his newsletter entitled From The Wilderness (a fitting title), predicted much of what ails the world today, including the present economic meltdown. He was so compelling a voice that Smith just turned on the camera and let him speak.

It's mesmerizing, in a disturbing way. Ruppert has an interesting background: his father was a cryptanalyst for the army and he himself was a policeman whom the CIA tried to recruit (he says) in its drug smuggling ring. He dropped out and became a sort of professional radical thinker, investigating the connections between politics, oil, money, the CIA, drugs, monetary policy and global warming which, by the by, Ruppert says is welcomed by right-wing business because the shifting polar ice cap just gets in the way of Arctic oil drilling.

His theories are all based around the idea that the world's oil is running out: it's in decline, and there's no way to cope. The Iraq war was an attempt to corner a shrinking supply. (Ruppert says the U.S. will never leave Iraq: it has built in Baghdad the largest embassy compound in the world, bigger than the Vatican.) Ethanol fuel is "an absolute joke" that takes more energy to manufacture than it produces. There is no such thing as clean coal and there never will be. Nuclear power takes too long.

Meanwhile, the food supply is also in danger. The soil is being poisoned ("a sponge into which we pour chemicals") and also uses up precious energy ("oil-power vehicles spraying gas-based ammonia"). There are 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy in every calorie of food consumed in the industrialized world.

Ruppert is equally down on the economy ("a pyramid scheme that requires growth forever") out of which he sees a collapse that is already happening: "a curtain of despair" across Eastern Europe, revolution in Greece, breakdown of government in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's going to be "as cataclysmic as the asteroid event that killed the dinosaurs."

Moreover, it's too late to do anything about it except perhaps to insulate your house, buy some books on first aid and holistic medicine, and store lots of gold and seeds, which will be the only thing that's worth anything.

Ruppert's apocalyptic vision is not unique -- the Internet is filled with such doomsaying -- but he comes to it with impressive research and a rational tone. At times you wonder about Ruppert's grip: there's a scene where he breaks down in tears of anger at how the warnings were ignored and at another stage, asked about the possibility of human ingenuity saving the day, he goes into a rant on critical thinking and his disbelief of mainstream media.

For those with an appetite for the worst news, however, Michael Ruppert is a good one-stop source for the end of days. He even provides the best explanation I've ever heard of exactly what a "derivative" is. It's a heck of a time to find out, too, when it's too late to do anything about it.

For Jay Stone's weekly movie podcast, go to www.canada.com/moviereviews.

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