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Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes ditched their reporting gigs to start a production company of which this kind of _On the Road_  update is its first fruits. Instead of following Jack Kerouac's lead of following where caprice leads for enlightenment, the couple packs an SUV and takes their flatulent black dog for a trip through 32 states to find America's retail soul. 

Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Borders figure most prominently in the couple's avoidance strategy to avoid national chains altogether. Correspondingly, they nix interstate highways fore secondary roads. 

The trek is at turns colorful in its depiction of thriving independently-owned eateries, booksellers and other shopping havens. Elsewhere, the desolation and dispiriting encroachment of cookie-cutter, big box retail sets a stark contrast to unique local businesses. In rare instances, the combination of having an outlet from the "Beast of Bentonville, Arkansas" (the couple's nickname for Wal-Mart) works out for a town's indie shops. 

Wal-Mart's mixed legacy includes a more or less decimated downtown Cleveland, OH. Another town in Wyoming, deemed too small for the corporation's consideration, effects participatory retail democracy by founding city-owned businesses in which residents can buy shares. Thus far, so far so good for that town.

Wal-Mart allows a couple of higher-up's to voice the company's prerogative. Though the corporation has employed some dubious advertising and legislative campaigns to further its cause, its mouthpieces don't seem entirely black hearted. A couple of arguments are even soundly conservative in their economic sense. It is Wal-Mart's  monopolization and effects on many cities' economies where the filmmakers' concern lies (and which the 'Mart reps sound to be spinning, often without solid corroboration).

Hughes and Hosein meet two direct conflicts of conscience in their encounter with the consumer behemoth. When they need an extension cord to conduct an interview with a Wal-Mart rep, they end up buying the cord at you-know-where. After they were approached by company suits about using their footage in a proposed CNN feature that would have also covered a more vehemently anti-Wal-Mart documentary, the couple was saved from the dilemma by the network's dropping the story.

Christian application of the lessons in Independent America is not simple as wondering where Jesus might shop, eat or drink coffee solely because some place doesn't sell smutty magazines or nasty music. The enormity of Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Borders and other chains has altered the social landscape, too. Do believers practice wise stewardship by patronizing chains that pump minimal profits back into the towns they purport to serve? Are not only bargain prices but manufacturing and labor policy, the value of personable customer service, and the balance between being a citizen and a consumer to be considered? It is just one aspect of life that requires applied theology and ethics. 

In concluding their sojourn, Hosein and Hughes acknowledged the inevitability of Wal-Mart and its ilk but emphasized the goodness of more grassroots entrepreneurship that gives communities character. Upon arriving back in their adopted British Columbian hometown, the viewer senses the twosome's relief to be back after a sometimes grueling haul.

Hughes' narration is both friendly and officious, like an especially listenable public radio commentator. Video work is generally well lit, and the postscript that updates the status of some of the businesses and legislative controversies they met with wraps up Independent America with about as much hope and dismay as the rest of the movie that preceded it.
 
Jamie Lee Rake