Candidly shot and impeccably edited this film should make you angry, make you squirm, or maybe both. Fix, for all its raw footage of Vancouver's downtown Eastside drug users, pushers, and down-and-outs, is about a struggle that has ramifications for the social health of the immediate community and those around it.

The issue of drug abuse rages on the surface. Right from the start Fix de-romanticises any notion that 'shooting up' is the most amazing high. It opens with an intimate view of Dean Wilson, going through his drug-use ritual. He explains that it really just makes one feel normal.

Fix shows us both sides of a polarised community: property owners benefiting from the cheap prices and who now wish to raise the value of their assets versus those who live below the poverty line, the destitute, and the addicted. But it lets the central figures tell their own stories.

On one side is Dean Wilson, who pointing to the area on a map of Greater Vancouver, says, "We don't even have washrooms down there . . . I don't think it's just an issue of drug users; I think its a war on poor people."

On the other side, Bryce Rositch spokesman for The Community Alliance (property and business owners), shown walking around the downtown eastside, refers to the lack of viable capitalism. "This is a tragedy of third world proportions," he says.

Caught in the middle are an odd and uncompromising collection of allies trying to address directly and honestly community problems. Mayor Philip Owen hopes to establish progressive Harm Reduction solutions to a seemingly never ending problem of addiction.

Doug Lang, an uncompromising Vancouver Police Sergeant deals directly with the poverty and drug use of the Main and Hastings area. Still, he fears that a "Safe Injection Site" would merely condone the very problems with which he deals. But he's so slick, saying all the right things, that one wonders what he might say off camera and off the record.

Maybe the real tragedy is that there are too few like the almost too saintly Ann Livingston (organizer of the Vancouver Area Network of Dug Users). There are just not enough who care about reaching out to the weak and disenfranchised.

And perhaps the real message of the film lies behind its double entendre title. Maybe a 'Fix' less about taking sides, or about who is right or wrong, but about exposing the problem for what it is. Fix: The Story of an Addicted City is a must-see film.