Hi everyone... speaking of UK readers, Dougie was kind enough to pass along a review of Death of a President, the controversial film about the "future" assassination of President Bush which premiered at the Toronto International Film Fest in September and debuted on the More4 channel in the UK on October 9.
Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy. For some, just the short list for the name of Madonna's African baby, but for those who paid attention in school, it's the US presidents that have been assassinated. This year, however, Gabriel Range wants you to consider just what would happen if the current leader of the United States of America, was to become the fifth president to join that exclusive club.
I first heard of Death Of A President a couple weeks before it was going to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival. I remember giggling at the thought of the problems the film might cause when it eventually gets shown in the States, no doubt in some smokey, sticky, New York film house. Then I hear that Channel 4 will be showing it on one of it's 'freeview' channels shortly, and I make a mental note not to miss this provocative story.
The film is shot documentary style, from a few years in the future. It looks back on the events of October 2007, when President George W. Bush is shot by a sniper as he leaves the Sheraton hotel in Chicago. The film looks at how the world changes in the wake of his death, and ultimately explores the assssination, trying to shed light on what really happened.
In the build up to the scene where Bush gets shot, I was really expecting to be experiencing that weird feeling of uneasyness, like most people felt in the build up to the initial hijacking scene in United 93. However, it never came. There's the sense that Range wants you to relive your feelings the first time you saw the Zapruder film of JFKs death, but instead, the shooting passes like some extra in a low budget teen slasher film.
I had thought for a while now, that surely the film was just controversy for controversy's sake. Within five minutes, that had been confirmed. The director wants this film to based heavily on the real world, to pull the viewer in to what happens to America in the aftermath. It fails. The film would not lose anything, apart from the free publicity, by inventing a new president for the story.
It IS an interesting film, with a very interesting story. Unfortunately, it's a struggle to actually watch the story unravel, as you're constantly being reminded that the film is about George Dubya. The acting in the film is great, also. Fictitious bodyguards and script writers, protestors and suspects, are all filmed 'talking head style', reliving their memories of what happened.
It's a shame a good story, and ultimately, a good film, had to be sort of ruined by a filmmaker seemingly desperate to bathe in the controversy this film creates. I'd give this film 6 out of 10, because it doesn't sound as much as 3 out of 5, and it's certainly worth more than 2 and a half.
