The Last Pig

In the animal-rights realm, filmmaker Allison Argo's feature is a worthy followup to genre classics The Witness and Mad Cowboy in passionately protesting mistreatment of livestock and championing vegetarianism without exposing viewers either to explicit footage of the killing floor horrors or reams of statistics and talking-head experts. Focus instead is tightly on narrator Bob Comis, who describes himself as a big-city guy from New York who abruptly and with no experience, became a pig farmer in the rural part of the state. (More biographical information on Comis would've been appreciated it—he was a writer for The Huffington Post) The farmer finds the animals fascinating, personable and intelligent. He strives to raise them in the very opposite of a big-agra factory farm, with an enriched, active and social life, giving his pigs the best possible care. Still, Comis grows to dread the monthly ritual of choosing which swine are right to send away to slaughter. Eventually he cultivates a vegetarian diet himself, and faces the dire economic choice of having to stop raising animals for meat at all. Even viewers not necessarily captivated by the grunting, friendly pigs, filmed enjoying their lifestyle in pastoral splendor (there was a reason Babe used super-cute muppetry) should respond to the film's emotional weight and message, delivered—dare we say?—tastefully.