It is often said that we live in the golden age of the documentary film. To the extent that this is true, the gold gleams brightest for the drama quotient of recent documentaries. The quality of their social analysis, for those that claim this to be their purpose, has generally been much dimmer. The latest contribution to the genre, The End of Poverty, from filmmaker and scriptwriter Philippe Diaz, is even dimmer than the norm. It devotes 106 minutes to the causes of poverty, but delivers...