Review of Death of a President (2006) by Jon T — 04 May 2008

Death of a President is not as interesting as it should be. Even simply as a fake investigation of the event itself, it is not as engrossing or real feeling as it should be. I also did expect it to go beyond that, to extrapolate consequences, perhaps ones the average person would never consider, to give us some real insight as to how a country can be affected by the loss of its leader. The furthest it goes in this direction is a few text.

Paragraphs before the cedits roll.

The fim's other problem is that it doesn't look like an actual documentary; it's far too put together. It seems more like they just happened to have.

Cameras everywhere filming events as they took place. But it's not even that good. The events do have a staged feeling to them. There are techniques that can be put to work, that make a fake doc seem like a real one. Here, they may have the basics, but they don't have the polish, the details that make it work. The actual account of the assassination is presented in a.

Manner that is too step-by-step and constructed. It would have more resonance if the filmmakers had gone for a slightly less clinical, faster, looser feel and given the actual event some emotion. Instead, you can tell none of it actually happened just by the way the doc is put together.

An artistic decision was made to tell the story in fake doc format, unfortunately the art is not there to make it work. Instead, I'm left wondering why they didn't just do a fake re-enactment of the event - dramatize the storyline, give us real characters and make it something that explores the human side, seeing as how they don't seem to want to tell an interesting story in terms of what-could-be and what-if? In other words, they.

Should have just made a straight up dramatic narrative.

It doesn't help that there is bad acting by just about everybody, including those portraying newscasters. You can tell they are not real reporters or newscasters. Every voice over sounds like someone reading an audiobook. James Urbaniak does a good job playing a forensic investigator, and there are a few others who also stand out as more than just competent.

This seems like an unambitious and therefore, only mildly interesting, ultimately pointless film that had the potential to go in some very interesting.

Directions, but instead ended up nowhere.