Death of a President 2006

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Death of a President is thought-provoking, but as much for 'how'd they do that?' as for its ideas. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The flaw in Death of a President isn't one of morality. It's one of dramatic interest. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: What's missing is shapeliness, suspense, narrative cunning, visual flair -- in short, art. Are we really to believe that a network of the future would broadcast such a barbiturate? Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Mr. Range is a talented man who knows how to control images and emotions, up to a point. By virtue of its subject, however, Death of a President takes on an unreal life of its own. The film itself becomes a riderless horse. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: (Director Gabriel) Range does a pretty good and sometimes very good job of laying out a disturbing narrative that's certain to provoke a lot of after-the-movie discussion. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Range comes about these issues in a provocative way, but they're still worth discussing, aren't they? Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The whole film has the whiff of a low-cost documentary unspooling on a basic cable channel on Sunday afternoon when you should be out raking leaves. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: Eerie, tense and immediate as Death of a President looks and feels, it doesn't contribute much of anything new to the discourse. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: [DOAP] wants to function as a mindless thriller that eventually makes us think -- and only after the film is over question the form that encouraged us to be mindless. These are incompatible agendas, and in the end neither is fully successful. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: (Director Gabriel) Range employs digital effects to rejigger real footage of Bush and others, and he's fairly adept at action filmmaking. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: There's a cowardice at work here. Playing with the powerful tools of documentary, it poses as artistically courageous when it's often little more than a muddied if familiar meditation on the sorry state of affairs the U.S. finds itself in in Iraq. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Death of a President manages to be predictable and astounding at the same time. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Death of a President begins as a disturbingly clever stunt but concludes as a contradiction, a political nightmare of haunting banality. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: To the credit of Range and Simon Finch, with whom he wrote the screenplay, it makes its point and poses its moral questions without speeches or quotation marks. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Despite the audacious title and premise, Range doesn't aim to shock, but to unnerve Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Aside from satisfying some kind of ghoulish curiosity about how such an incident could possibly happen, there's precious little in Death of a President to justify the extremity of its central conceit. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: The film itself becomes its own worst enemy, subverting its attempts at subtlety in the name of ideological urgency. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It will only leave Bush supporters wondering how one man can put up with so much hate. And it may leave Bush critics asking why they just spent $10 and 90 minutes on something that's more controversy than content. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: D.O.A.P. offers no information, insights or ideas that a couple of political science majors couldn't come up with while hanging out between classes. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Death of a President is celluloid mediocrity. It's neither interesting nor convincing. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: It's a stunt more than a movie, and if this is what's passing for intelligent liberal thought in this (or any other) country, we're really in trouble. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Range has a marvelous feel for the cliches and conventions of TV-news documentary, and the tone of mournful elegy he strikes here is both convincing and -- believe me, I'm shocked to be writing this -- moving. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Even people who think George W. Bush is the worst American-made disaster since President James Buchanan will have no trouble recognizing Death of a President for the lousy thing it is. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Just as the ducks get lined up in a row and we're ready for the movie to reveal its true purpose -- Political satire? Paranoid dystopian fantasy? Apologia for the Bush administration? -- we suddenly realize it has none. Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: I give nothing away by telling you the president dies. From that point on, the film's most egregious offense is becoming predictable and heavy-handed. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Death of a President is a masterly piece of documentary chicanery that kills George W. Bush without once pandering to his legions of ill-wishers. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Every thinking person should see Death of a President. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Layering the sense of dread with measured expertise, Range does a formidable job visualizing the circumstances surrounding the crime. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: There's a far more subversive political mock-umentary coming next week. I invite President Bush, Senator Clinton, and all politicians to get down with Borat. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: As skillful an artist as (director Gabriel) Range clearly is, he has gone to an awful lot of trouble to make a painfully obvious point about threats to civil liberties in a post-9/11 world. Read more