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The Fog Of War [2004]
![The Fog Of War [2004]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G0JHDNFKL._SL160_.jpg)
On the DVD The Fog of War DVD piles on 24 additional scenes (38 minutes total). They're short and random, but those interested in the film will find it worthwhile to hear McNamara discuss what it was like to work with JFK and who he feels was ultimately responsible for Vietnam. There's also a text-only list entitled "Robert S. McNamara's 10 Lessons," which he introduces by saying that the 11 lessons in the movie were not his own. Some of them, however, are not that different (movie lesson no. 1: "Empathize with your enemy." McNamara lesson no. 9: "If we are to deal effectively with terrorists around the globe, we must develop a sense of empathy--I don't mean 'sympathy,' but rather 'understanding'--to counter their attacks on us and the Western world."). --David Horiuchi
RRP: £19.99
Our Price: £3.78 (subject to change)
Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history. Employing a ton of archival material, including Lyndon B Johnson's fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War--and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy. McNamara himself emerges as--well, not exactly apologetic, but clearly haunted by the what-ifs of Vietnam. He also mulls the bombing of Japan in World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, raising more questions than he answers. The Fog of War has the usual inexorable Morris momentum, aided by an uneasy Philip Glass score. This movie provides a glimpse inside government. It also encourages skepticism about same. --Robert Horton
so that's what they're like ?
Review date: 2008-07-09 Rating: 10 out of 10
Ever wondered what those chaps are like who make enormous decisions that radically effect tens of thousands of lives... watch and learn.
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Reviews
Easing the conscience of McNamara
Review date: 2008-02-01 Rating: 8 out of 10
This film is very important in various aspects. One of the most influential men in the history of US clears his conscience by this documentary. He is a very intelligent person, a rising star in the entrepreneurship. He enlists in the army. He is part of a team in the US Air Force making statistical calculations how to kill more efficiently! He does not refuse this fact in the film. He professes 11 commandments, nothing unknown what so ever. The director plays his part and doesn't ask hard questions. McNamara states clearly that he doesn't answer the questions anyhow, he says what he wants to anyway.
The changing of the US foreign policy between the offices of Kennedy and Johnson is shocking. Lyndon johnson carefully creates the path from pulling the troops from Vietnam strategy to committing in a total war in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson is only the tip of the iceberg. Kennedy's assassination, the fictional bombing of the US ship by North Korea to be used as a pretext, the coup in South Vietnam are all pieces of a big puzzle.The "wise" McNamara is easily convinced he has to change too. He is a modern war-lord in civilian suit.
For me he is a brave men but a con man. He cold bloodedly describes the Japanese Front in the World War 2, the Missile Crisis in Cuba and the Vietnam conflict. Brave because he faces the music by going back to places he would be least welcome such as Cuba and Vietnam. He is con because he says he is a human and all humans make mistake! You can not fool history mister, lives of thousands of humans are not so cheap! In the film there is a quotation from Curtis Le May. He suggested bombing of Cuba during the Missile Crisis and he wroke havoc all major Japanese cities by incendinary bombs long before the A-bomb. He says that if the US had lost the War they would be treated as war criminals. Yes sir. You are war criminals and should be treated as such!
Note: A book named "Race Against the Enemy" carefully analyses the reasons behind nuclear bombing of Japan, concluding that it is the entry of Soviet Union into the Pacific Theater that led to the acursed bombings.
Fascinating
Review date: 2007-11-06 Rating: 10 out of 10
This fascinating film by legendary documentarian Errol Morris is subtitled "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara," and if we can't learn something from McNamara's life, then we can't learn anything. This man was present at some of the pivotal moments of 20th century history. He was a key adviser to the military man who bombed the hell out of Japan before the A-bombs were even dropped. He revived Ford Motor Company in the 1950s. He was at President Kennedy's side during the Cuban missile crisis. He picked the site of Kennedy's grave. And he was the civilian head of the U.S. military during the first several years of the Vietnam war. After decades of public silence, McNamara opens up amazingly for Morris, apparently wanting to record his observations and judgments for posterity while his mind is still sharp as a tack. Morris obviously approached his subject with an agenda, but to his credit he doesn't ambush McNamara the way, say, Michael Moore would have. In the end, the portrait of McNamara that emerges is that of a brainy whiz kid who approaches every job as a problem-solving opportunity. He is pressed about feelings of guilt for the deaths caused by his roles in World War II and Vietnam, but he seems reconciled to the fact the sometimes one has to commit a lesser evil in order to head off a greater evil. The portrait of Lyndon Johnson that emerges, on the other hand, is devastating. As described by McNamara, LBJ was a man who knew full well that his Vietnam strategy couldn't work but was too stubborn and prideful to change course. (McNamara resigned as secretary of defense when LBJ declined to respond to his memo recommending a pullout.) Years later, we learn, McNamara met with his opposite number in Vietnam and was surprised to learn that the Vietnamese did not regard the war as a senseless tragedy that should have been avoided (the prevailing view in America) but as a worthwhile war of liberation. That is why one of McNamara's key rules is that you need to be able to "empathize" with your enemy
Interesting and revealing
Review date: 2006-02-24 Rating: 10 out of 10
A documentary that revolves around an interview with US secretary of defense Robert McNamara doesn’t sound promising, but I can't recommend this film highly enough - it is a fascinating insight into all the decisions, logistics and brainstorming that go into planning a war. McNamara was involved in WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam, and is candid and open about all of them, admitting to gross mistakes and defending decisions such as the firebombing of Tokyo convincingly. An essential film for anyone with an interest in international politics.
A man who handeled the cordite
Review date: 2005-11-09 Rating: 8 out of 10
A good film about a bad man? Robert Strange McNamara was Secretary of Sate for Defence under President Kennedy. He oversaw the escalation of the Vietnam war and this is the chief reason, out of the corner of your eye, you might think him a bogeyman of the left. But this film gives fresh ammo: Harvard educated statician who made aerial bombing of the Japanese a weapon of mass destruction while leaving allied air crews virtually untouchable; president of Ford motor company, that byword for lifting very worker’s voice to its greatest potential and the man who authorised the use of the coruscating agent orange in an already nasty, often secret secretly so, nasty crypto-colonial war.
The film is elegant. Its use of graphics and mood music, even when McNamara is talking to camera ensure that. Its agenda appears at the beginning to be one of getting you to see through the patina of charm McNamara has. At one point they show him ‘working’ the film crew of the documentary ‘ne need to retake, I remember where I was… have you got that… shall we go’etc and him doing exactly the same 40 years ago at a press conference during the Cuban missile crisis. But the film then goes into biopic mode and you see McNamara from his early days, college, married life, war service and then business career and it starts to feel like they and you are beginning to warm to McNamara. And so you do. McNamara asks tougher questions of himself then he ever gets from the off camera interviewer: was I war criminal; could I have avoided Vietnam becoming what it did and did I harm my family by the choices I made. While he doesn’t become a loveable old cove you start to think he was a sensitive man who simply had to make decisions, something the left appear to forget. Wouldn’t you just love to see Harold Pinter have to deal with missiles pointing at Hampstead or whether to risk more deaths of your own soldiers so that less of an enemy could be killed?
McNamara has faced up to his decisions and gone to Vietnam to meet his victims. The film describes a man travelling back down the road he has travelled, trying to understand and for the most part it is convincing as part testimonial part confessional. It’s also a fascinating primer for 2nd half 20th century history. In the end you think of him as a good man doing as little evil as possible and now regetting even that measure, hoping others can avoid his circumstances.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Robert McNamara
Creators:
Robert McNamara (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
EAN: 5035822504639
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, PAL,
Release date: 2004-08-23
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 107 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2004-02
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Language: English (Original Language)