Wag The Dog

I caught Wag The Dog a while back. I think I enjoyed it more the second time around than I did when it first came out. The premise of the movie was a simple one. It is just days before the presidential election, and the current president finds himself embroiled in a sex scandal. So the president’s spin-doctor (Robert De Niro) and his assistant (Anne Heche) are forced to use desperate means to ensure that their guy gets re-elected. De Niro figures that the only way for them to get the heat off their boss is to divert the public’s attention from the sex scandal until the election is over. And, in his opinion, the most sure-fire way of doing that is to give the public a larger story to take their mind off the sex scandal. That story is going to be a war. Not a real war, mind you, but a fake one. He turns to flaky Hollywood producer, played by Dustin Hoffman, to produce an elaborate media event that will fool both the media and the public into believing that the US has gone to war with Albania. They create fake war footage to feed to the media; bring in a song writer (Willie Nelson) to produce a patriotic soundtrack for the war; and even go so far as to concoct a war hero for the country to rally around.

This is a particularly clever movie. And it asks the interesting question as to just how much of what you see on TV is real. It should give the conspiracy theorists out there much to ponder. While this movie is filled with A-list stars, Dustin Hoffman clearly steals every scene he is in. But the real reason to see this film is for the clever writing. The movie isn’t done in a tongue and cheek fashion, and the fact that it is played so straight is what makes this movie so believable. While I knew that something like what is played out in the movie has never happened, it is just so outrageous that it is almost plausible.