Flow: For Love of Water (Unrated) ***

By Robert W. Butler, McClatchy News Service

In Quantum of Solace, the villains buy up the water rights of Bolivia so they can gouge the citizenry for every life-sustaining sip. According to Flow: For Love of Water, this isn't a figment of some screenwriter's imagination.

Before ending on a somewhat hopeful note of defiant activism, Irena Salina's globe-hopping documentary is a terrifying downer. The film maintains that we're being poisoned by our supposedly safe drinking water, future wars will be fought over water rather than oil and rapacious corporations will decide who is wealthy enough to afford clean H2O.

Most people lack access to clean water. In many countries, international water treatment and distribution companies -- often with the backing of the World Bank -- have taken over public water utilities. Now the tap works only if you scan a credit card proving you have enough money to pay for a drink.

Not only is Earth heating up, but efforts to capture and divert water have backfired. The stagnant water trapped behind dams gives off methane gas, contributing to, yes, global warming.

Thank goodness we've got it good here in the good old U.S.A.

Except that the herbicide Atrazine has found its way into this country's ground water. Frogs and fish exposed to Atrazine have changed sex, and the chemical triggers reproductive problems in men. Atrazine has been banned in Europe (where it is made), but the Bush administration cut a deal to allow its continued use here.

You could always stick with bottled water, but Flow points out that it's an unregulated industry. Often you're paying premium prices for a product of poorer quality than what comes from the tap.

The good news is that people are wising up. Flow should play an essential role in that process.

Director: Irena Salina

An Oscilloscope Pictures release. In various languages with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes. Playing at Cosford.