Misteraser Critics,are you kidding us

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

SnoopyStyle This is an Errol Morris documentary where he interviews former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This is part lesson, part history, but mostly a confessional. It has stock photos and archival footage to lay out the history. It has the compelling original score by Philip Glass.What makes this compelling is the ultimate insider who is making a confessional of his life's lessons. Errol Morris takes this gem and polish it up with his editing, his ethereal questioning, and Philip Glass' music. It is a haunting portrait of somebody who is now gone. This basically serves as his last testimony.

tomgillespie2002 Aside from the more obvious propaganda tools such as Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph Of The Will, the power of the documentary medium has never been so blatantly evident than in Errol Morris' 1988 film The Thin Blue Line. The film was based on the murder of a police office in Dallas, Texas which saw Randall Dale Adams wrongly imprisoned for 12 years, coming within 72 hours of being put to death. Morris' investigation and eventual documentary film got the case re-opened, and saw Adams subsequently released. It is a glowing advert for the genre, and Morris was putting his massive talent at work again 15 years later in this film, The Fog Of War.Morris sat down with former U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara for 20 hours, having him speak into the camera about his rather eventful career. The film structure is based on McNamara's 11 lessons on the act of war, previously chronicled in McNamara and Brian Van De Mark's book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. McNamara talks about his life from when he served in World War II, to his brief time serving as Ford Motor Company's President, to his headhunted appointment as Secretary of Defence, initially under President John F. Kennedy, and eventually Lyndon B. Johnson. It is both a powerful autobiographical account of his life, and a complex analysis of the U.S.'s political structure and policies.Being one of the most despised political figures in the last century, Morris' portrait of Robert McNamara is both fair and even-handed. He simply allows McNamara to pour his words out, speaking through what is known as an 'Interrotron', where the talking head would talk directly into camera. It's an effective trick, as it allows us as the audience to relate to him in a much more personal way. The film doesn't try to be judgemental and put McNamara on a stand, it is however a commentary on war by one of the most fiercely intelligent and complex men of his time. McNamara, love him, sympathise with him, or outright hate him, he makes for an enticing host, and fascinating to listen to.In somebody else's less-experienced and less-skilled hands, this film may have just been a simple talking head picture. But in the hands of Morris, the film becomes utterly enthralling, cutting from McNamara's talking head, to archive footage, special effects, graphs, charts, and whatever he can throw at the audience to make this as fast-paced and breathless as a documentary can possibly be, without ever losing focus of McNamara's story. The Cuban Missile Crisis has never be so vividly discussed and so terrifyingly portrayed.Simply breathless filmmaking, and one of the finest documentaries I've seen from the 'noughties' era.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

djestic03 This is the only movie I have viewed twice in a row, and apologize for having NO clue why the movie was so compelling. It left me emotionally wrung out. It is NOT just some boring, emotionless war movie, war re-telling, or piece of propaganda. McNamara is electrifying, riding the roller coaster of emotions from knee-slapping humor to teary-eyed, voice-cracking despair to nerve-tingling horror at the destruction that was...and could've been. His intelligence is a wonder of its own: he displays no ego, speaks plainly, and avoids any self-aggrandizement, but his perspective is invaluable. And the lessons here have broader applications, suitable for anyone who would be in politics/government, business, management, foreign affairs, or supervision. Kudos to him, and the director!

Don Muvo I'm deeply sorry I had to betray my prejudices in my summary. I loved this movie, both because it helped me understand 20th century American History better, but also because it is the video memoir of one of the men who best characterized American military thinking at mid century. I summarize the movie this way because it should leave you with many questions.We were all very excited about John F. Kennedy back when the Vietnam war was still only a civil war, and not yet a war of America against the communist bloc. JFK was widely respected, both for the agility of his mind, and his ability to take advice from others, even those he was confronting as enemies. Unfortunately, as we all know, the JFK presidency ended suddenly and prematurely, and the Vietnam War was escalated by a very different type of man, Lyndon Baines Johnson. This is the story about the man who ran the war for him. It is not a story about the war, it is a story about the man, and because the man is a philosopher, in a way it is a story about all men. McNamara makes it very clear that he is not an elitist. The film depicts him as a person trying to do his job as he saw it, as efficiently and carefully as he could, and like many of us, a person who was sometimes afraid to admit mistakes.I hope you enjoy this film as much as I did.