Why We Fight (2005)
First screened in March 2006
Director: Eugene Jarecki. Documentary. Polemical postdate on the legacy and evolution of Dwight D. Eisenhower's ominously proclaimed "military-industrial complex." Screenplay: Eugene Jarecki. Featuring interviews with Chalmers Johnson, John McCain, Joseph Cirincione, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, John S.D. Eisenhower, Susan Eisenhower, Anh Duong, Gwynne Dyer, Gore Vidal, Dan Rather, Wilton Sekzer, William Solomon, and pilots "Fuji" and "Tooms."

Twitter Capsule: Revered in many circles but why? Heavy over-reliance on stock footage. Rhetoric ungrounded in images. What's new here?

VOR:   Rehearses timely truisms about fear and profit as engines of war. Hastens decline of "political" documentaries into spliced-up stock footage and keenly felt banalities pitched to a choir.



Photo © 2005 Charlotte Street Films,
© 2006 Sony Pictures Classics

Not yet reviewed in full. Grade: D


Awards:
Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prize (Documentary)

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