When Death of a President first came out, it sent folks like Rush Limbaugh into quite a tizzy. If you watch it, you'll wonder what all the fuss was ever about. For a movie built on a deliberately provocative idea, the story winds up being nothing more than relatively well-crafted blah.This film is a pseudo-documentary about the assassination of President George W. Bush during a visit to Chicago in 2007. Resembling an episode of the public TV show "Frontline", it weaves real news footage together with fake movie scenes and characters talking to the camera as though they were being interviewed by someone. The story presents the day of the fictional killing and the equally fictional aftermath as something of a mystery while making vague allusions to various elements of the Bush Presidency. It's an unusual idea and that sense of the unusual carries you along for a while, but after watching it for a while you'll probably ask Clara Peller's old question, "Where's the beef?"The conservatives who almost had an aneurysm over Death of a President should have viewed it before throwing their fits. The film depicts George W. Bush more respectfully than he's been presented in any mainstream media since about 2005. It portrays him as a man of character and substance, while showing Bush-era protesters in a fairly bad light. In this movie, President Bush is a good man and his fictional murder is a tragedy on many levels.The film does make some vaguely negative allusions to Vice-President Dick Cheney and the Patriot Act, which is the main problem with Death of a President. Not the negativity about Cheney or warrantless wiretaps, but that the movie never makes more than vague allusions about anything. Fictionally murdering a real person is a bold and arresting concept. It demands a bold and arresting story to go along with it. Filmmakers Gabriel Range and Simon Finch entirely fail to tell such a story. They needed to say something in this movie, something smart, significant and compelling about President Bush, his actions, his America and the nature of his opponents. Range and Finch pussyfoot around all that stuff. Watching this movie should fill you with either anger and disgust or giddiness and admiration. Instead, it'll leave you wondering what the point of it all was. Death of a President should have served as either an indictment of the Bush Administration or an indictment of Bush's critics. It refuses to do either and in so doing, fails to justify its own existence.I don't know if Range and Finch were cowardly or just too caught up in trying to be sophisticated and nuanced. I do know they took an incredibly controversial notion and turned it into a movie that's not worth seeing.

I bought this movie on a pure whim of decent premise. The back eludes to neither pro or anti-bush, and even quotes how it's made for "thinkers". This is all garbage. Basically, you're gonna assume it'll start off with Bush getting picked off somehow by some dubious fellow, and move onto an intriguing "what-if" scenario. Questions riddled my head, "wonder what Chaney would do much different?", "how would the U.S. really respond?", "what would become of Bush's course of actions?", "what would happen in 2008? 2018? 2050?", "how would the rest of the world view this?". But forget all that, you're set on a journey of 30% anti-Bush protests news clips before death, 60% forensic "whodunit", 10% no freedom wagon.Firstly, this movie is overwhelmingly anti-Bush with the only pro-remarks coming from his speech writer (all mainly personal, not political). Second, this is NOT a political movie, it's a murder mystery you don't care about because it didn't happen. Even when it mentioned Chaney moving up to presidency I perked up for a moment, as if the opening credits ended and the movie were about to begin, but no, no, back to some fictional trial with a bunch of malarkey about evidence. It's fictional, make overwhelming evidence, make the assassin found dead, and give us a political yarn to unravel.This movie deserves to be protested, shot, then put on fictional trial before we all come together and whine about crappy movies.

During my Staff Duty this week I was able to watch Death of a President. This movie is shown in a "documentary" style concerning the events surrounding the assassination of Pres. George W. Bush. So far, the movie has shown in Toronto Film Fest and on BBC. Some reason US companies have shied from distributing it. Which is odd considering most of the anti-American junk they release.On to the movie: Spoilers galore, but then again you already know where this is going. The movie is shown with actual news flashes mixed in with fake news bulletins and interviews to trace a path from the time Bush lands in Chicago to the shooting to the follow-up investigation. Cutting to the chase, Pres. Cheney blames an Arab man who works in the same building in which the shooter was located. This "average" man who happens to be Arab just happened to train with Al Qeada in 2001, a character playing a Washington Post reporter called this just a misfortunate vacation spot. Which considering the Post I'm willing to assume that this guy was not an actor but an actual Post reporter.The true shooter, the director of this "documentary" discovers is a black Gulf War vet that lost a son in Iraq and had another develop a drug addition upon returning. Showing the true incompetence of the Fed Govt at times, this shooter leaves the area, drives out in the country and kills himself, but not before leaving his son a suicide note, which the Feds never take serious. Which is odd since high school kids posting threats to the Pres on Myspace get a call from the Secret Service.The movie was interesting to say the least. It had elements of JFK, Fahrenheit 9/11, Manchurian Candidate, and Forrest Gump all rolled into one. Half my brain felt sorry for the President being shot then the other remembered this is a liberal "hit" piece on all things Bush. Im just surprised the 2000 Florida recount wasn't thrown in there just for kicks. As much as I was ready to turn it off, I felt compelled to continue watching because I remember where I was when Bush was shot, no wait, I was watching it then. Anyways, in a step for movie making they can make anything possible, and any moral restrictions are eliminated. I'd like to see if a movie where President Hillary Clinton is assassinated would be made. In the end, I'd think not. For this movie is the ultimate liberal wet dream and so amazingly over the top in heavy handedness it comes across as High School creative writing assignment.

Firstly I should state that I am no fan of George W. Bush and in fact think he is probably the worst president of the past 30 years. I also do not find the film's subject matter "disgusting." People in the U.S. and elsewhere are free to make a movie exploring the effects of an assassination on George W. Bush or any other public figure. And Americans shouldn't be so hasty to lambaste something since they only bring more attention to it by doing so. With that said: this movie is terrible. It does not belong in a theater; it is a film that screams loudly it was made to be viewed on the internet, or at best as a made-for-TV movie. It is not only poorly made but also unprofessional. It is a fictional movie presented in a realistic manner, yet it comes nowhere near convincing the viewer to take it seriously. The story is poorly told: the movie attempts to lay itself out as a documentary, yet all the while knows itself to be a work of fiction. There are plot twists and severe dramatic elements, neither of which belong in a documentary, which presents solely the facts. The style of the film is terrible; from obviously photo shopped images of interviewed actors appearing with the President, to lame mock-ups of anti-Bush protests, the movie consistently comes across as childish and amateur. The worst part of the film is probably the actors who are interviewed, each one is terrible in their own unique way. And then of course the movie's liberal slant is presented about as subtly as a Dick Cheney gunshot to the face.The movie is not worth seeing, but not because of its controversial subject matter. It is simply a poorly made film that hinges its entire presentation on its controversial statement. It will disappear, as well as it should, from memory and fade into notoriety.