Death of a President

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): **½

The British-made fake documentary Death of a President, opening in a limited theatrical release tomorrow, has a premise just built for controversy - an investigation of the assassination of President Bush - but in fact it's a well-crafted, thoughtful, even eerie piece of work, the main drawback of which is a certain lack of punch. While writer-director Gabriel Range's work here harkens back to Peter Watkins' films of the 1960s (Punishment Park, The War Game), Watkins was more of a provacateur.

The fake interviews here are much more believable than many in similar films - such as CSA: Confederate States of America (although recognizing the mom from Freaks and Geeks as the president's special advisor and James Urbaniak - well cast - as a forensics expert was momentarily jarring for me) and it seamlessly weaves in new, recreated footage with existing footage of the President - including a (perhaps too lengthy) segment of Bush's speech to the Economic Club of Chicago prior to his "assassination" - along with other real life "characters" to give the film an immediacy. Chicago makes an unsettling location for the crime, too, with the Chicago police in full riot gear and mayor Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J., reminding of the chaos that ensued at the Democratic convention in 1968.

A President hated through much of the world, and much of his own country for that matter, the film captures how the palpable anger could be funneled into an act of violence, and by his own people; much as the terrorist act committed in Oklahoma City ended up being perpetrated by American Timothy McVeigh, and not the Islamic fundamentalists that many in the US initially suspected. The film to its credit touches on a Muslim's fear that it the crime was committed by one of them, knowing how the repercussions of 9/11 made their lives a cruel hell of bigotry and paranoia.

While the film doesn't fully explore the repercussions of a Dick Cheney administration - some would argue that we've already been in a Cheney administration, and thus, exploring it further would be redundant - it does believably demonstrate Cheney using a suspect in the assassination as an excuse to invade Syria, and his push through a new Patriot Act is a very likely after-effect, too. The film focuses more on the assassination itself and the ensuing investigation, while touching on media coverage of tragic events - the montage of newscasters announcing the news is darkly comic - struggles to find the proper measure of sober and sensationalistic.

While Death of a President is admirably not a satire but a sober, relatively apolitical "What if" exploration, the end result is convincing but not exactly radical. In fact, the film is so earnest it borders on the tedious at times. But by keeping the scope focused, and the tone elegiac, and with the technical end very skillfully done, the film works best as a keen mimicry at the level of a cable documentary on a forensics investigation. Perhaps its overall lack of impact is the scariest aspect: The scenarios presented here are all too believable. One only wishes the film had a bit more edge.