WAG THE DOG (1997) *** Lots of people credit this film with foreseeing how Clinton would neutralize the Monica Lewinsky affair by sending troops to Bosnia or, even worse, giving him the idea. They're missing the point, almost entirely. In fact the film digs much deeper, projects much further, and foretells the Bush administration response to 9/11, the tragic invasion of Iraq, the unnecessary alienation of our allies, and everything else that will happen in American politics for at least the next 25 years. All just as clearly, and in infinitely more detail, than the projections of Nostradamus. Robert De Niro is the centerpiece, as the master of all spin doctors, and he's absolutely brilliant. A topography of pathology, a strain so analytically irrational and obtuse to as to be nothing so much as admirable. But is this really how we want our best and brightest to act? Or should they be more like Dustin Hoffman, detached in a more personal pathology, lost in some fabled zip code of Beverly Hills, his only contact with our world being the receipt of royalties and adulation? Their allegiances are telling: De Niro to an employer, Anne Heche to an office, and Dustin to his artistic muse. No politics, no morality, no concern for the doomed They're all on point, and any indictment of American ethics this powerful is bound to have Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson in it. The first half plays as so real as to be a horror film of the most awful nature-one that we recognize as already upon us outside the theater. The arrival of Harrelson signals a change, and Barry Levinson probably properly figures that most of his audience will be more comfortable with a farce. Why not? They vote for one every four years and admire their work nightly on the evening news in between.
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