Winterbottom doc a nasty shock for Naomi Klein

British fans of Naomi Klein's 2007 bestseller The Shock Doctrine can judge for themselves tonight whether Michael Winterbottom's documentary based on the book - which argues, in a nutshell, that capitalists have taken advantage of natural and man-made disasters to promote their free-market ideals - is a disaster.

Klein (above, on the West Bank), darling of the anti-globalisation movement since the publication of her first book No Logo in 2002, disagreed with the direction the documentary was taking. As a result she asked for her name to be removed from the credits and for someone someone else to provide the narration.

And at least two critics think she was wise to do so. The Hollywood Reporter described Winterbottom's film as "a rough, disjointed doc that fails to get across Naomi Klein's arguments against disaster capitalism", while in Britain the Independent's Johann Hari described the film as being "garbled to the point of meaninglessness".

Hari believes The Shock Doctrine to be "one of the most important political books of the past decade", partly because Klein wrote up her thesis with "a perfectly distilled anger, channeled through hard fact". So what happened to the film? "Winterbottom serves up a cold porridge of archive footage and soundbites that have some vague link to the book, without the connecting spine of Klein's explanations," wrote Hari. "It is as though an idiot has explained the book to another idiot, who then made a film."

Klein herself has tried to be diplomatic - insisting that "nobody threw a fit and walked away" and saying she wishes the film well - but has made it clear that she is unhappy with it. She did not attend the film's premiere at the Berlin film festival.

She told the Independent recently: "I can confirm that the original idea was for me to write and narrate the film. For that to have worked out, however, there would have needed to be complete agreement between the directors and myself about the content, tone and structure of the film.

"As often happens, we had different ideas about how to tell this story and build the argument. This is Michael's adaptation of my book, and I didn't want there to be any confusion about that."

The main bone of contention appears to be Winterbottom's over-use of narration and lack of interviews to support Klein's argument. "This film should have been another Inconvenient Truth," said Hari. "Instead, it's just inconvenient and a shocking waste of a masterpiece."

Judge for yourselves: More 4, 10.pm, Tuesday, September 1