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188 comments in total

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58 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
The Best Political Satire Since Dr. Strangelove, 25 November 2004

Author: camachoborracho from Los Angeles, CA

Rarely can film satire make you laugh and be worried about the future at the same time. Levinson's film does just that, with a great cast and great writing, this film succeeds.

You may have noticed that many of the posts and reviews argue that this is not plausible. Obviously these posters do not realize that satire is supposed to be over the top and show what can happen in extremes, and ironically, this came out just after Clinton's sex scandal, and is still relevant today with George W. and will continue to be regardless of the president. Also, some may think it oversimplifies the public as idiots, but this isn't true, especially if they are being deceived and information is withheld. There are some implausibilities, as in why no reporters went to Albania or how other countries didn't get involved other than denying the charges, but these are small and even addressed in scenes with the rival candidates, news reporters and even CIA head William H. Macy.

Really I don't know how anyone can not like this film since it is smart, funny and scary all at once with fine performances and direction all around. This is an American political satire classic that is sadly becoming less satire as time goes on.

OVERALL: 9/10. Buy or at least rent before the satire becomes reality.

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40 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :-
This is not nothing, 1 March 1999

Author: Sean Gallagher (naes@cgocable.net) from Oakville, Ont. Canada

I saw this before the brouhaha with Clinton and Lewinsky broke, and I imagine most of the negative comments about this film came because they saw it after and thought this was a Nostradamus film. When I saw it, I thought it started a bit slow, and was a bit too self-satisfied (like the scenes of people crying at a concert; that seemed fake). However, for most of the way, this is sharp, biting, and yes, funny, though when I first saw it, I thought it was more accurate in its Hollywood satire than on its government satire. Time, of course, proved me wrong.

David Mamet will never be universally loved, because not only does there seem to be a large group that doesn't get him, but that thinks those of us that like him are degenerates. Myself, I happen to think he's one of the best playwrights and screenwriters working today (though I'm split so far on his novels). His writing may be highly stylized, but I guess I'm in tune to the rhythms of his dialogue. And he doesn't assume his audience is dumb; rather, he seeks to challenge them by asking you to come to your own conclusions, rather than hit you over the head. And he does that very well in this movie; at the beginning, we may think Conrad Brean and Stanley Motss are real sleazebags, but at the end, while we deplore the action they take of faking a war just for political ends, we can't quite dismiss them either.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the performances of Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman (Anne Heche is also a standout as Winnifred Ames, the increasingly bemused presidential aide). DeNiro seems at first like a teddy bear here, with his beard, his hat, and his bow tie, but he transfers the energy associated with his more volatile roles (TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, GOODFELLAS et al) to guile and street smarts here. The way his eyes probe whoever he's talking to, and the way he anticipates almost every verbal comeback the other person has demonstrates that(he can't anticipate every event, of course, but once he gets used to it, he can).

But the standout here is Hoffman. There's been a lot of comment on Hoffman basing his character on Robert Evans. My own theory is he read Lynda Obst's excellent book HELLO, HE LIED, which talks about the producer's role, and simply played that. I formed that theory because of his mantra whenever things go wrong, "This is nothing!", especially when Winnifred reads him the riot act after their plane crashes. There's a part in the book where Obst talks about having to argue budget with the studio, and realizes it's all a game where they have roles to play; she argues for more money, the studio for less. Just as Winnifred's role is to be pessimistic, and Stanley's is to be optimistic. And Hoffman never condescends to Stanley, instead showing a talented, maybe amoral guy who deep down is so insecure that he values credit even over his life("F*** my life, I want the credit!" is one of the best lines of the film"). Contrary to his line, this film is not nothing.

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45 out of 59 people found the following comment useful :-
The greatest political satire ever, 11 October 2004
Author: M S from Nashville, TN

I do not understand the people who did not like the movie. For me this is the greatest political satire since Chaplin's "The great dictator". Both de Niro and Hoffman are great as well. This movie is not about Clinton although they did predict correctly the Kosovo war, and Albanian terrorists. It is about American political system which is made by and for TV. Several lines from that movie ("Why Albania?" - "Why not?", "Albania does not rhyme", "What do you remember about the Gulf war? One smart bomb... I was in that building when we shot that shot", and many more) are impossible to forget because everyday political life does not let us forget them.

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30 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
Fascinating and Interesting., 3 July 2002
Author: tfrizzell from United States

Barry Levinson's under-rated "Wag the Dog" is a brilliant piece of satire which is to the 1990s what "All the President's Men" was to the 1970s. The president is in trouble after a sexual scandal with an under-aged girl. Enter Robert DeNiro and Anne Heche who want to distract the nation with something else as they try to get their boss out of the hot seat. The only problem is: nothing is going on. So it is up to them to create something to rally the country around the executive-in-chief. Now enter sleazy, but high class Hollywood director Dustin Hoffman (in a well-deserved Oscar-nominated turn) who is contacted to start an imaginary war. He agrees and the plan works, but as time goes by more and more problems occur and the lies continue to snow-ball. Levinson's excellent direction and Hilary Henkin's clever screenplay raise the performances of all involved. Naturally DeNiro and Hoffman are guaranteed to excel in a film like this, but good work is also done by people like Heche, Denis Leary, William H. Macy, Woody Harrelson and even Willie Nelson (!?). Somewhat ignored in 1997, but still one of the best films of that year and one of the more important films of the 1990s. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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30 out of 41 people found the following comment useful :-
Brilliant satire, 9 October 2003

Author: perfectbond

Wag the Dog is a brilliant satire of the American political system with enough realism to make it plausible. It speaks the strongest to people who already have a visceral loathing of the American democratic process (not how it was in 1789 but how it is now). They see a degraded and ignorant public easily duped by politicians who are no more than habitual liars who will say anything to get elected but lack any idealism whatsoever. Intelligent, funny, but also very depressing, 9/10.

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19 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Short & sharp satire on media manipulation, 4 January 2002
Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

During the campaign to re-elect the president of America, an underage sex scandal between a girl scout and the president in the oval office. To divert attention spin doctor Conrad Brean is called in to manage the fall out and hold it off for the 11 days till the election. Conrad employs Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to produce a war in Albania to divert the media away from the real story.

This was made before Clinton was accused of misconduct with Monica Lewinsky and the subsequent re-start of military action in Iraq. This seemed to give it a much greater feel of realism and much more credibility. However even before this happened it was still a very sharp and very good satire on political spin, but also managing to have a dig at Hollywood movie types. The story is told in a very stage-play fashion and is dialogue driven with very funny moments throughout. It's not as terrifying as a real look at media manipulation could be because it chooses to be a comedy instead but it still makes plenty of valid points.

The two leads are excellent at the head of an all-star cast. De Niro manages to be a professor-style character while at the same time having an easily accessible sense of menace just beneath the surface. Hoffman is good sending up Hollywood producers well and drawing parallels between the creation of a film and the creation of political news stories. The cast also has a series of cameos and extended cameos who add both humour and quality to the film - Willie Nelson, Denis Leary, James Belsuhi, William H Macy etc.

Recently in the UK we've had huge problems with spin doctors running the Labour Government - to the extent that 11th September was described as "good" by one as it gave them the chance to bury several bad news stories that they had stored up. And more recently with various Governments' waging a media war to win support their stance regarding military action. This film doesn't make hugely serious points but it does make you think about how the media is used to shape public perception and make us think what those in charge want us to think.

Overall a very funny, very clever satire that has a great cast, the only criticism being that it stretches it's point a little too far with the "old shoe" section.

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22 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
A truly great satire, 21 June 2002

Author: Agent10 from Tucson, AZ

It had been a while since I last watched this film, but I once again remembered the reasons why I loved it so. Thoughtful and evocative, this film really captured the nature of politics and spin doctoring. This certainly ranks as one of the best political comedies of all time. The over-the-top attitude of the film didn't detract from anything, making this still quite believable. It also demonstrated how people's emotions can be manipulated when aggressively attacked. The fragile nature of the human spirit tends to make us more susceptible to such manipulations, as demonstrated in this film. With the exception of Anne Heche, everyone's performance in this film was rather good. The only other downside was Mark Knopfler's score, which was completely out of place in this film.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
The Principle of Fundamental Surprise., 6 September 2005

Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is a thoroughly enjoyable movie. The story is probably familiar so I'll just summarize it. The president of the USA gets caught having sex with a teenage Firefly Girl and DeNiro and Heche hire Dustin Hoffman, an old Hollywood hand, to produce a distracting event, like a war with Albania, to flood the media and distract the public's attention for long enough (11 days) for the president to be reelected.

One thing after another goes wrong and each time Hoffman comes up with yet another colorful lie to extend the life of the story. The CIA publicly ends the war prematurely? No problem. "This is NOTHING!" cries Hoffman, "You ought to try shooting 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' when two of the four horseman die two weeks after the beginning of principal photography!" No war? No problem. Hoffman invents a hero who was left behind in an Albanian prison camp. "Every war has a hero." The man chosen to be the hero -- Woody Harrelson -- turns out to have spent the last twelve years in a military prison for raping a nun. Lies are piled upon lies.

We all know that political spin is put on everything that happens in Washington. This movie came out in 1997 during Clinton's presidency but he never started a war to deflect criticism. And yet the way Levinson has directed it, and the way the performers attack their roles, it is almost completely believable that deceptions like this take place. Hoffman stretches his acting a bit but he is never so hammy that he is unbelievable as a Hollywood producer. ("Alphonse, bring me my veggie shake now.") He brings to the part some of the smooth-talking duplicity that he showed in "Papillon" and "Midnight Cowboy." He glows with self satisfaction as he spells out his accomplishments to DeNiro. "This is the greatest thing I've ever done, bringing this war to a satisfactory conclusion." DeNiro: "But there was no war." Hoffman: "That makes it all the more difficult." Nobody else is in the least bit over the top. They play it the way Levinson directs it, as a realistic straightforward story. None of the actors seems to know that he or she is in a comedy and it works very well.

I don't think I'll mention any more of the gags because I don't want to spoil it. But it's hard to forget the scene near the end of the film when Hoffman is looking out the window at the funeral of Harrelson's character. Huge American flags, the casket being carried by the "men of the 303" (invented for the occasion). Hoffman spreads his arms expansively and says to DeNiro -- "Look at it. The whole thing is a ******* fraud, and yet it's 100 percent real!" A victim of his own egotism, Hoffman decides that he wants credit for the production and is perfunctorily disposed of, having "suffered a massive heart attack poolside." This was probably a funnier movie when it first appeared. President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp and all that. A war built on a string of lies seemed so outrageous that it was impossible to take a movie like this seriously. Well, circumstances change. The movie is still a great success but my heart sank at the sight of the flag-draped coffin returning from "Albania." The story seems equally outrageous now, but in a very different sense of the word.

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20 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Spinning a Yarn, 19 March 2004

Author: James Hitchcock from Tunbridge Wells, England

Hollywood is sometimes able to produce satirical films that, in retrospect, appear to predict future developments in American politics. `Being There', the story of a simple man whose homespun philosophy is taken for profound wisdom and who, as a result, becomes a candidate for President, may look like a satire on the Reagan administration, but in fact it was actually released in 1979, during the Carter years. `Dave', which features a womanising President called Bill whose marriage is in trouble because of his adulterous relationships and his trimming of his radical principles, came out in 1993, just after Bill Clinton had taken office. It must, however, have been planned well in advance and was presumably not actually intended as anti-Clinton satire, but that is how it tends to come across today.

`Wag the Dog' is another film that proves to have been unintentionally prophetic. Shortly before an election, the President is embroiled in a potentially explosive sex scandal which threatens to end his presidency in disgrace. In order to distract the public's attention, his advisers concoct a wholly fictitious military crisis in the Balkans and hire a Hollywood producer to provide the necessary harrowing footage of war scenes. When the Albanian government protest that their country is not in fact at war, the aides present this as a triumph of American diplomacy that has averted the threatened crisis, and, in order to keep the affair in the public's mind, concoct a further sub-plot involving a supposed military hero (in real life a convicted rapist in a military prison) held prisoner by a rebel faction.

All of this may seem very familiar, but bear in mind that this film was made in 1997, two years before President Clinton, faced with a potentially explosive sex scandal which for a time threatened to end his presidency in disgrace, took America to war over a crisis in the Balkans. At least he didn't need to concoct a fictitious war. The parallels with the more recent Iraq war are perhaps less exact, although the scenes involving the supposed hero `Old Shoe' were strongly reminiscent of the ballyhoo surrounding Private Jessica Lynch.

Like `Being There', `Wag the Dog' is not, of course, a work of social realism. In real life, a simpleton like Chance could not become President without being found out, and no administration could actually get away with inventing a bogus war. (That's why they have to provide real ones). In order to make a satirical point, both films exaggerate prevalent tendencies in modern political life. `Being There', among other things, is about self-deception- Chance never pretends to be anything he is not, but those around him deceive themselves by seeing him as what they want him to be. `Wag the Dog', on the other hand, is about political `spin' and the deliberate deception of the public. Politicians try and deceive as many of the people for as much of the time as they think they can get away with, and the media will go along with such deception for as long as it is in their interest.

`Wag the Dog' has some sharp points to make, and there is a very good performance from Dustin Hoffman as the Hollywood producer Stanley Motss. Motss is recognisably suffering from status anxiety in its most acute form- the form that afflicts the brilliantly successful and wealthy man who still feels undervalued by society and will do anything, however unethical or even dangerous to his own safety, to win public recognition. (He complains that there is no Academy Award specifically for producers, ignoring the fact that one is not needed because the producer traditionally receives the Best Picture award).

Despite that, however, I felt that the film as a whole was not as sharp or as funny as it could have been. I think the reason is that it is basically a one-joke film; once the war story has been exploded, the plot tends to lose direction. The idea of concocting a wholly bogus war is a brilliantly surreal satirical conceit; the idea of concocting a bogus hostage drama, although more inherently plausible, lacks the same inventiveness, so the `Old Shoe' scenes come as something of an anti-climax after what has gone before. I felt that Robert de Niro as the presidential aide Conrad Brean was less effective than Hoffman; I have never thought that comedy is his forte and that he is at his best in serious roles. (I may be judging unfairly, as there are several of his comedies that I have not seen). I also felt that it was a mistake not to show the President in the film- this may not be a realistic film, but the idea that a spin doctor could create a fictitious war without even the President being aware of what is going on strains credibility past its limits. Moreover, as we found out with Nixon and his attempted cover-up of the Watergate affair, the culture of spin involves our elected leaders themselves, not just members of their staff. Overall the film had its moments but could have been better. 6/10.

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14 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Dustin Hoffman is Robert Evans!, 26 November 2003
Author: (caspian1978@hotmail.com) from Attleboro, MA

Right from the opening scene, Wag the Dog moves fast. The audience must be in shape to follow the actors from scene to scene. Fast talking and fast walking, the film moves from city to city, limo to jet, and studio to studio. The movie doesn't slow down until its final scene when nothing happens. Very political is all you can truly say about Wag the Dog. Anyone who believes in conspiracy theories has Wag the Dog as one of their top ten favorite films. De Niro and Hoffman are terrific together. Hoffman does his best Robert Evans impression as the fast talking, fast moving Hollywood Producer that can solve any problem.

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