First, tell people not to distribute proprietary files that don't necessarily even look the same on different computers running the same version of Word.

Second, try NeoOffice. I haven't given it a shot yet, but it ought to be pretty good. Let me know.

There's also icWord, which is a $20 viewer.

You can also try using the builtin TextEdit app. That'll probably support it enough for you to read the text, anyway.