“I think people are expecting Edward Snowden to walk out on stage right now,” Michael Moore joked from the stage at the Toronto International Film Festival, in an introduction that doubled as a public apology. He understood that, when you name your latest project Where to Invade Next and slap a kitschy picture of the Joint Chiefs of Staff above your fest’s catalog blurb, it’s bound to suggest any number of things: a take-no-prisoners takedown of America’s military-industrial complex; a scathing indictment of our nation’s perpetual-war fetish; how the government sends its soldiers into war and then ignores them once they come back home. (These were simply the three most popular rumors about the movie leading up to its premiere; there were dozens of others.) The fact that virtually no one knew the 61-year-old cinematic muckraker was even making a movie until it was announced as one of the event’s opening night selections attests to how under-the-radar the project has been since he’d started on it last year.

Despite the fact that Where to Invade Next has all the hallmarks of a typical Moore movie (rhetorical flourishes that lean to the far-left, ironic narration, a wicked sense of humor), his first new film since 2009’s Capitalism: A Love Storydisplays a kinder, somewhat gentler version of his usual gonzo style, one laced with a sense of uncharacteristic optimism instead of boiling-over outrage.

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