The 11th Hour is a 90-minute environmental schlockumentary produced and narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio which endorses the theory of Anthropogenic global warming. Unlike Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, The 11th Hour focuses mainly on the alleged "future catastrophes" of man-made global warming. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, New York Times reporter Andy Revkin, and Scripps Institute oceanographer Jeremy Jackson all appear in the movie.[1] The movie uses the tagline "turn mankind's darkest hour into its finest", falsely calling this mankind's darkest hour despite almost all environmental indicators being positive and much improved from 50 or 100 years ago.
The film was released in late August 2007 and immediately became a bust at the box office. It was shown on over 111 screens a week, and after the first eighteen days only grossed $417,913 from ticket sales, less than the cost of the film's production.[2]
The promotional poster and DVD case for this movie are illustrated with an image of the planet Earth with a large Vibram type work boot print superimposed over it, perhaps illustrating the attitude Leonardo DiCaprio and other Hollywood elitists have toward those who depend on resource extraction for their livelihoods and might wear such work boots on the job, such as loggers, miners, and construction workers.
A pre-release showing of the film at Cannes reportedly ended with most of the attenders asleep.[3] The Chicago Sun newspaper called The 11th Hour "a bore" and the news parody website The Onion called it "a headache of a film directed like an Errol Morris project, but with half the substance. It's clearly preaching to the choir, but even they may find it off-key."[4]
Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace leader, has called the movie "another example of anti-forestry scare tactics".[5]