Movie Review - Death of a President

I think that most of us, whether it is as a watcher…or even a reviewer…fall into a bit of an anesthesia, or maybe even an amnesia, when it comes to film. In this blockbuster era of growing spectacle and CGI wonders, we forget that film can also be a method of protest, an unflinching look at an issue, whether wrapped in a fictitious scenario or rooted in real events…and lastly, an indictment of what’s all around us that we take for normal, but shouldn’t. Yes, the ‘political thriller’ is still around to this day, which is what Death of a President from 2006 is classified as, but even recent entries looking at real events hardly make a dent in the public consciousness, while the classics, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), All the President’s Men (1976), The China Syndrome (1979) and Network (also 1976) are instantly identifiable. This recognition is often followed with the lament, “Boy, they don’t make them like that anymore.”

They do. It’s just that people just stopped caring or, at the very least, aren’t interested in taking a look in the mirror and seeing the reflections of what’s going on around them. And on one hand, I get it. We’re bombarded by this crap on our 24-hour news stations or, if you should look away from that, then it’s likely taking up space in your social media venue of choice. Most regard movies as escapism, myself included at times, and, perhaps the biggest bottom line, they’re not going to pay money for something that challenges them. This leads us to the answer to the question posed by the paragraph above: they don’t make ‘em like that anymore because most modern examples fail to make money.

While I won’t go into the synopsis the same way I do with most of my reviews, I need to at least tell you what Death of a President is about. Released in the middle of George W. Bush’s second term as US President, this British film is a mockumentary about a hypothetical successful assassination of the then current President. You have to remember that this film was released at the time when Bush’s popularity was ebbing, due in large part to the continuing war in Iraq with a continued little to no evidence of the weapons of mass destruction that the administration had used to start the war in the first place. After the film’s premiere on the festival circuit at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, it was met with criticism, some warranted as we’ll get into momentarily…but its biggest claim to notoriety, depicting the assassination of a current, sitting US President was considered by some to be insulting, others inflammatory and, by most in poor taste. I’ll admit that the filmmakers could’ve perhaps approached their themes differently and thus be a bit more impactful…such as one of my favorite documentaries from that era, 2005’s Why We Fight, but I’m not gonna lie, sometimes people need that slap in the face, that dousing with ice cold water that this film tries to be.

Why am I looking at it now? Hasn’t its context, and thus its points and themes, aged out of relevance? Some 19 years later…I wish I could say yes, but that is not the case. If you’re willing to be honest with yourself and look hard into the mirror this film attempts to be, you’ll likely be depressed that the themes we find here: the erosion of civil rights, racism and profiling, journalistic sensationalism, America’s heavy-handed foreign policy and an overreaching executive branch willing to shatter any norms to get what they want are just as prevalent now, actually even more so, than what they were then. That’s what brought me back to this film, to make sure that what I am seeing now is true: in the Age of Trump, whatever ‘Dub-ya’ and Cheney were doing back then is small potatoes to what the current executive is willing to do. Upon its end during this recent viewing, I found myself just staring at the screen after the credits had rolled and, as a film dork like me is wont to do, quoting another movie to express my feelings…this time, Chirstopher Reeve from Superman II, after he'd failed to heed Jor-El’s warning about giving up his powers. “He knew. He tried to tell me…I just didn’t listen.”

The structure of the film and, as such, how it chooses to approach its themes, in some ways echoes the police procedural TV shows that are commonplace these days. So we start off by establishing the circumstances and thus where our main players might come from. This is done in the form of the protesters outside the venue where the President is about to speak. First up are the environmentalist protesters, including one of our first suspects in the case. Bush’s administration is probably where we saw the science of climate change enter the political arena with Republicans very quick to don their now seemingly institutionalized role of climate deniers. Next we have our anti-Iraq War protesters, which leads to our remaining suspects. This too was not out of the ordinary and in fact, expected…for the reasons I provided above. The Bush Administration had been incredibly shady not only in the evidence for starting that war, shifting the focus from Afghanistan, who had played a role in the September 11th tragedy, to Iraq…who had threatened his daddy, George H.W. Bush, but also in the reasons for keeping it going, adding more and more troops to the region. Lastly, since this was to be a speech on the economy, you had even then protesters lamenting the wealth inequality. [Hoooo boy…if they only knew. – Ed.] I stick this one at the end for a couple of reasons: first, no suspects emerge from here and second, it ends up being oddly prophetic, as the “Great Recession” would start here in the US a year after the film’s release. Speaking of being prophetic, there’s another theme here that I didn’t list in the opening, but if you watch how the police in the film handle these protesters…with what could be considered excessive means in a way that’s fairly militaristic…well, for me it looked a little too much like the “Black Lives Matter” protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, some 14 years later.

After the president is killed, we progress into the manhunt phase of the film, bringing in a new suspect: a man of Syrian descent who was leaving his office job for the day. This starts us on the road to the themes of civil liberties, as this suspect is subjected to relentless questioning without any attempt at Miranda Rights or an attorney (initially). But this is also where we start to see the profiling emerge. As the film talks to the lead investigator, you can tell right off the bat that he has…prejudices…and it only gets worse from there as, no matter what this suspect tries to do…some of it not helping his case any…everything feeds into reaffirming this investigator’s preconceived notions, creating a feedback loop that ends up giving the investigation tunnel vision. The fall of this domino starts the tumbling of another as a cop leaks the name out to the press. Then, as it still is now, instead of investigating and researching, the hallmarks of good journalism, no…it’s rushed to screen in an effort to be the first to break the news. While this serves to stir up feelings present since the still relatively recent 9/11, it also taints any prospective jury pool, completing the fall of the second domino. And since the suspect is Syrian, here goes the third domino as Syria’s Bahar al-Assad has been of interest to the American intelligence agencies until only recently when he was finally deposed. With Vice President Cheney (now President in the events of the movie) well known for being hawkish, he pressures investigators and intel agents to “take a second look” at the country’s involvement in the assassination. Of course, “taking a second look” in this environment means “make this fit into a sufficient reason to start firing at them”. It’s here where once again I have to bring us to the present while handing the film a compliment, as I was happy to see that the interviewee they went with for part of this segment was someone opposed to going down that road, insisting that the evidence, circumstantial at best, just didn’t fit this proposed outcome. Voices like that have continued to shrink since then and now, under Trump Part II, are actively being purged from government service at the time of this writing.

This all culminates in the third act, as we learn the identity of the assassin and their motivations. Obviously, I don’t want to give it away…and while you could criticize the film for pulling this ending out of nowhere…this isn’t exactly the case. We’re given a few breadcrumbs in the previous acts, but the way the narrative is constructed, we’re never really given any time to consider them. Instead, we’re following the same leads as the police, agents and investigators are and so, when our ‘least likely’ suspect turns out to be the killer, it’s easy to understand the reflex of calling this a bit of a cop-out. I don’t necessarily think that’s a fair conclusion to come to, given the context both of the situation as presented in the film and in the context of reality. What makes these kind of events so tragic is the fact that it’s never the obvious person. It’s always a shock to find out it was the quiet neighbor, or the best friend you hadn’t heard from in a while. And even though nowadays you can always point to someone’s social media profile on some app and say after the fact that there they were, telling everyone exactly what they were gonna do…the fact of the matter is that when everyone has a bullhorn, the odds are you aren’t going to hear the voice you need to until it’s too late. In that light, I think the film handles this as best it could. But there’s one last thing to address here, and once again, I’m gonna go all comic book nerd on you. In Alan Moore’s ‘The Killing Joke’, the Joker’s thesis to Batman is that all it takes to go from a normal, everyday guy to a psychotic killer is “one bad day”. In its closing, the film puts this theory forward also. In the end, it’s not an eco-terrorist, it’s not a man shoehorned into the role of stereotypical Jihadi…it’s the man that gave everything he had to a system willingly, only to have that system turn around and take what was most precious to him. That’s the one that breaks. And I have a feeling that your opinion of this movie is going to depend on how you react to that or if you can empathize with it. Now, if you can’t do the latter, don’t think of yourself as some unfeeling jerk. The film really doesn’t establish anything to steer the audience toward that sentiment. True, anything of the sort would end up spoiling the ending as the audience would wonder why we’re spending so much time on this one guy…but I think the stumble the filmmakers do commit is the opposite…in barely showing you anything. If I were writing this review contemporarily, in other words closer to when the film was released…when I first watched it…I’d also say that your opinion, like that of Jim Gordon or Batman himself, also hinges on whether or not you agree with the Joker and that all it takes is “one bad day”. However, in our current society, we’re given daily examples that perhaps the Joker is right, because “one bad day” headlines seem to saturate the news day after day after day.

While anchored to a specific period in American history, it’s easy to think that Death of a President would fade with time, as most ‘of their time’ films do. However, given that its themes are still issues we have to wrestle with today, in some cases even more than we did back then, it’s a little terrifying that the film holds up as well as it does. If you’re willing to take a hard look in the mirror of not only where America found itself then, but also where it is now, this film is definitely a shot of cold water to the face. The caveat I give is this though, anymore, a shot of cold water likely will not do it. Today’s Americans need the equivalent of aftershave splashed on a face full of papercuts. This, sadly, could relegate the film as a quaint document of past opinions by some viewers. Falling more into the former than the latter, and this is one of the few times our ratings scale feels weird, Death of a President earns a Happy Cat rating.

Post-Script: It’s worth noting that outside of the “officials” and “participants” interviewed, much of the film’s footage is comprised of stock footage or news clips, which I found pretty interesting. Of course, this being at the beginning of CG effects, there are times when cast members are inserted or mouth movements are altered that are pretty obvious. I have to admit that given the level that deepfakes and such have gotten to, it would be equal parts interesting and terrifying to see this style of mockumentary be revisited.