Less a film than a stern talking-to, Stephanie Black's Life And Debt examines the effects that the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and American corporations have had on Jamaica. Never even feigning objectivity, Black shows the disastrous toll that Jamaica's $7 billion debt has taken on its citizens: Schools lack funding, jobs have become scarce, farmers have lost their markets to cheap imports, and, after giving barely sustenance-level employment to many employees, sweatshops have left to find even cheaper labor. In short, it's a bad situation, a kind of economic colonialism that's supplanted the actual colonialism Jamaica shrugged off in the early '60s. No doubt Black deserves applause for delving into these problems, but her film has scarcely any other value. Jumping from one problem to another without taking the time to examine any in much depth, Life And Debt is grab-bag journalism, if the term journalism even applies. Truncated soundbites provide most of the commentary, with, unsurprisingly, one side dominating most of the screen time. Debt goes from bad to worse when Black juxtaposes footage of American tourists with chiding, second-person narration written by Jamaica Kincaid. ("You see natives. You marvel at the things they can do with their hair." "You wonder how it is that you've never tasted such a sweet banana before.") It's as if Black dared audiences to risk guilt by not buying into her conclusions from the first frame. However tough it is to argue with those conclusions, it's just as tough to respect a documentary that doesn't play fair. Anyone interested in the subject would be better off spending Life And Debt's torturous 80-minute running time with a good article on the topic.