I'm not sure which is the worst political movie I've ever seen,
Red Dawn surely comes close. But I also thought
The Formula reeked. Truth be told, not that many good, truly political movies get made.
But in the past month, my wife and I've seen two great ones, Good Night, and Good Luck, and, last night, Syriana, which was SUPERB. In fact, it was the best spy movie I've ever seen, something that will forever make Tom Clancy's movie versions seem like Nancy Drew, not that I've ever been fond of his stuff. Syriana may even be the best political movie I've ever seen, though there's more competition for that.
Full characters and realistic dialog and (unfortunately) a wholly plausible plot. And just the tinest smidgen of special effects. Though totally engrossed, I kept thinking about Traffic, which - until the credits for Syriana were scrolling up - I had forgotten had also been directed by Stephen Gaghan.
Plenty of credit to go around, but some surely goes to Bob Baer, the longtime CIA operative who wrote See No Evil, which provides some of Syriana's underpinnings.
Baer was interviewed here. An excerpt:
Q: How real would you say the film is in how it portrays these situations?
Baer: I would say that the movie is absolutely authentic. I don't usually watch movies, and I would never, ever watch a spy movie. But this one - it's everybody I knew in this world. Oil traders... I spent a lot of time with Islamic fundamentalists... it was totally authentic. It was based in reality.
I traveled with [director Stephen] Gaghan and every voice - he mixed up voices and faces to do this. He spent three or four months getting these people right. We were in Monte Carlo and spent the day with an Arab prince who is just the complete opposite of the Hollywood cliché of what an Arab prince is. He was classically educated at Oxford, a polo rider. Absolutely a beautiful house, not in the least bit garish. He knew history and American literature. He has just read The Corrections.
Q: How complicated was it for you to write your book, to sit down and cover all those years?
Baer: It was complicated to make it readable because bureaucrats, CIA, government officials don't write like normal people do. To even interest people in a very convoluted subject is hard. I think the middle of the book gets dense, with the Iranian stuff. The only people who really understand the middle part are the Israeli intelligence services.
Q: What was your most harrowing experience in the CIA?
Baer: I got shelled. I was being hunted by Iraqi helicopters. I was living in a cave with Talibani, getting shelled for a week straight. There's nothing you can do when you're getting shelled by 155s.
casQ: What a contrast that is to sitting in George Clooney's house in Italy. How long did you visit him?
Baer: A week or so. We flew in and he couldn't have been more gentlemanly. He ran out and grabbed my suitcase out of the car. It's hard for the CIA to meet Hollywood. He was writing Good Night, and Good Luck at the time. I didn't even know what he was talking about - how do you take the Edward R Murrow story and put it on film. In black and white? He didn't get any suggestions from me on that.
{snip}
Q: My impression - and a lot of people share this - is that the CIA is a dangerous and possibly evil organization. At least that's the emotional reaction.
Baer: That's because you watch too many movies.
Q: Yeah, I was going to say, is there anything you can say to dissuade me from that?
Baer: It's a bureaucracy. But the movie is looking at the evil side, which is that they've taken bad information to target someone overseas and kill him. The CIA does kill people, you have what is called lethal findings, in spite of 12333 Executive Order. You have the case of Khaddafi, you have the case in Yemen where they fired a missile into a car with 6 people and killed them all, they're trying to kill bin Laden with Predators. It does happen.
My experience has been that the CIA gets into a bad position and does the wrong thing when it's politicized. Look at the Bay of Pigs. If you look at the history of that, it wasn't the CIA's idea, it was Kennedy's idea. It started with Eisenhower, he did it, he forced it through. It was done against the advice of the analysts on Cuba. Iraq - I know the name of every source they had on Iraq, and I know what they said. I knew before going into this war that that information was crap.
So, what are your favorite and least favorite, fictional political movies?