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5.0 out of 5 stars
Obvious Oscar Winner,
By
This review is from: The Fog of War (DVD)
I thought Capturing the Friedman's should have won the Best Documentary Oscar until I saw Fog of War. If you are thinking about staying home this weekend and want to watch a film that gets you thinking, then Errol Morris' Fog of War is your best bet. Winner of the 2003 Academy Award for best Documentary Feature, Fog of War documents Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson, and his recollection of everything from his tenure as President of Ford Motors, to his involvement, as an advisor, in the foreign policy and subsequent standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fog of War uses archival and interview footage with McNamara to explain the eleven lessons he learned from his time working as Secretary of State. His political savvy is captured onscreen as he brings the viewers up to speed on some of the historical decisions he helped foster, the results to which saw him become the President of the World Bank. Fog of War acts as a reminder of the importance of past political decisions in a more comprehensive and constructive way thank Michael Moore is capable of.
4.0 out of 5 stars
valuable retrospective of the decisions of war,
This review is from: The Fog of War (DVD)
In his own words Robert Strange McNamara tells of his early life and his career, notably his service as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Through his narrative, viewers obtain a unique retrospective on critical international events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the bombing of Japan and the Vietnam War. McNamara sticks to the history. His personality is revealed by the way he speaks about events he found moving, but he dodges the tough personal questions, such as those about his family, his responsibility and his sense of guilt. Clearly a reflective man, the lessons he provides are worthy of consideration by all, not just government leaders. In seeing some of the same mistakes made in current foreign relations as those McNamara recounts, viewers recognize the cycle of history, and human falliability.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Documentary Of The Architect Of The Vietnam War!,
By Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Fog of War (DVD)
If ever there was a modern tragedy comparable to that of poor Macbeth, it is surely that of feckless, clueless Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, a man widely acknowledged to be the principal architect of the American strategy in Vietnam, the original author of policies such as body counts, a math whiz who saw the world in terms of sophisticated and elegant mathematical models. Unfortunately for McNamara and the 58,000 American boys who died in the rotting jungles of that fetid wasteland, the models failed in the real world of revolutionary zeal and little Asian guys in black pajamas, rubber flip-flops and with scruffy haircuts, who apparently never studied such methods in cutting-edge calculus and so were inexorably immune to such weighty prognostications. It is bizarre, to say the least, then, to view this rambling monologue of twisting and winding excuses that the frail but still drop-dead intellectually gifted McNamara uses as he so frantically attempts to stamp his own brand of revisionist reinterpretations on the history of the Vietnam era and his own participation in it. Like the ghost of Iago, then, McNamara emerges from his own self-imposed splendid isolation of the last thirty years to set us all straight on what really happened back when bombs were flying and kids were dying. As the facts clearly show, he continued to support the prosecution of the war long after he knew it was a lost cause. Certainly this is spellbinding stuff, yet anyone who is as well informed regarding the particulars McNamara slips through so effortlessly understands he is often playing fast and loose with the historical facts, and that he ignores many pieces of evidence which contradict his take on the way things unraveled. Indeed, what it appears to reduce to in the end is a brilliant but haunted man still attempting to justify, by virtue of his own considerable charm, intellect, and self-serving guile, and through painting an inaccurate and one-sided portrait of the zeitgeist of the post WWII era, his own role in the single most disastrous American war (at least until Iraq). This is an extended interview and documentary you will not want to miss. Enjoy!
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