Review of Wag the Dog (1997) by Adam F — 07 May 2013

"Wag the Dog" generates a lot of laughs in two ways: first by being a genuinely funny dark comedy and secondly by playing with your brain and making you so afraid that what is going on in the story is true that you can't help but laugh. The script is incredibly sharp and expertly acted. Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro play off each other very well and you keep going back and forth figuring out which of the characters is your favorite. The supporting characters are also very effective, with Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson playing small but memorable roles and Anne Heche playing a character that's most like the audience, going along for the ride and panicking at the slightest sign of a possible derailment. When it comes to the story, it's so ridiculous it feels completely genuine and it's so plausible it can only be a fantasy. This political satire about a crew that is hired to orchestrate a phoney war in order to distract the world from the American president's latest blunder is 100% on the mark. When you hear the premise of the movie and you see the introduction you're thinking to yourself "ok, I see what they're doing here, they're showing an exaggerated version of how gullible people can be, this is going to be a lot of fun!" but as the movie progresses, you find yourself listening to "Conrad Brean" (De Niro) and the more he explains how they're going to get away with it and make the whole thing convincing the more you are convinced yourself that not only are the events in the film going to play out very differently from what you thought yourself, but the movie feels like a thinly disguised classified report that's either been leaked or even purposely put out there by shady government ops in an attempt to make the story into a fictional tale and therefore "totally implausible in real life". This second train of thought it was makes the movie unforgettable, you watch the movie half hoping that the characters won't succeed and half hoping that they will. It's as if the movie is an inside look on a real-life event; if they fail in the film then there's no way that anyone could get away with it in real life and if they succeed, well then you'll have to question every piece of news that you ever stumble across.

This is one of those movies that's so smart you have to watch multiple times if you ever want to really appreciate everything that's going on. The dialogue is so sharp and the story is so immersive that you'll likely only be able to focus on one of the elements at a time and won't even notice a lot of the subtle touches in the film. If you have a friend that's somewhat of a conspiracy theorist and you show them "Wag the Dog" you will be able to see their brain just collapse in fear and frustration as they watch the film and you will have a ton of fun discussing it with anyone who's sitting in the room with you as the movie concludes. There's a lot of re-watching value in the film for the story alone and in a world where newspapers are constantly shrinking and yet the people find themselves scouring the internet for information more and more, the movie takes on a whole new light. "Wag the Dog" is simultaneously hilarious, intelligent and frightening and if a movie about political conspiracy sounds unappealing to you, you have no idea what you're missing if you skip this one so check it out with some friends and see what everyone takes out of it. (VHS, May 1, 2013).