Path to War

Trailer—Path to War

source: Path to War

I haven't watched too many other efforts by Frankenheimer... unless I'm terribly mistaken, the only ones I have are his The Hire entry and Ronin. I keep finding myself impressed by him and seeking out what he's directed. The man did some mighty fine work(R.I.P.). This may be my first exposure to Gambon, but I was definitely pleasantly surprised. He really brings Lyndon to life, and there isn't a moment where he's on-screen that the audience is bored. The parts are all filled well... Hall, Sinise, McGill, Baldwin and Sutherland, heck, everybody, deliver impeccable performances. The editing and cinematography are remarkably well-done. The music, as with much else in this, is underplayed very effectively. The pacing is just about flawless. Coming in at almost three hours, it's never dull and almost invariably concise. So much is said through so little. Yet it never becomes overpowering, either. The writing and its high quality are consistent. From what I can tell, this is rather true to what happened, and certainly realistic. Not actually a bio-piece on Johnson, but more a drama focused on his involvement in the Vietnam war, the debates about what action to take. There is some language and dialog of adult nature. I recommend this to those interested in the subject matter, and fans of the film-makers. 8/10

I was just a young child during the whole of the 60s. Even still, it was a troubling and scary time. This film explained a lot to me as to how we became so embroiled in a war not of LBJ's or even JFK's making. And, I don't even blame the advisors. What would you do...what would any of us do, especially in the mind-set of the early 60s...when the U.S. was engaged in Cold War and saw it's self as the ultimate power and protector of Democracy and the Free World (As a matter of fact, don't we still view ourselves that way today?). Men such as McNamara sincerely believed they were giving the President sound advise, but when it became clear the War in Vietnam was a mistake, Johnson's ego would not let him consider pulling out of the war. As stated in an earlier review, once he was committed to the war...that was it. He was gonna see it through, even if it meant a one term Presidency. All the cast was marvelous. Michael Gambon was very credible as LBJ. And, I particularly enjoyed Donald Sutherland, Felicity Huffman, James Frain (I'm a big fan of his), and even Alec Baldwin (whom I usually can't stand). The scene where LBJ intimidates a cowering George Wallace aptly conveys his art of manipulation. And, the scene where Johnson threatens to send a frustrated and resigning Dick Goodwin to Vietnam as a Marine private aptly conveys his habit of scaring the bee-jeebies out of his underlings. I also was especially moved by the scene where the Quaker anti-war protestor burns himself alive in front of McNamara's Pentagon office. I really think this is one of Baldwin's best proformances. I also want to say that I think, for the most part, the Brits (Gambon and Frain) did a fantastic job with their accents (one Texan...one Bostonian). In short, it was a very well done docu-drama. Frankenheimer did himself proud...and unlike Oliver Stone, he let the facts speak for themselves. It was a timely film, especially in this day of America's New War. And, it was an enlightening history lesson. Heart felt thanks to all envolved.

When I saw this movie yesterday, I was struck by the language and how it echoed the arguments made now about the Iraq War. In fact, I thought certain phrases were inserted into this movie to criticize the Iraq war as they are the EXACT same things said today about the futility of the the US presence in Iraq, given how "liberals" Donald Sutherland and Alec Baldwin were involved in this project. Then I noticed this movie came out in 2002, BEFORE George Bush decided to invade Iraq. Path to War covers the period of time in US history from Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated in January, 1965 to March, 1968, when he announced he was not seeking a 2nd term for President. We get to view how LBJ was a champion for voting rights and committed to improving the lot of poor Americans with the Great Society. But the movie focuses on how the United States came to get drawn in and bogged down in the Viet Nam war, to the downfall of Johnson. It illustrates how Clark Clark Clifford went from being opposed to the war to being it's most vocal supporter, and how Robert McNamara went from promoting the war to being forced out as Secretary of Defense for coming to opposing the war. How Johnson was tentative about pursuing the war, micromanaging combat operations and the demoralizing effect the Tet Offensive had on this country. The movie has expertly woven in numerous television broadcasts, cartoons and other historic artifacts of the era to drive the point how the Johnson administration acted in carrying out the Viet Nam war and their effects. This is the movie to watch if you want to understand how the Viet Nam war came to be a large conflict with it's divisive effects on this country. It's a movie that should be required viewing for any future President ever contemplating a "small" foreign war in the future.

This does illustrate beautifully how the best and the brightest can royally screw things up, and cause the deaths of thousands of American soldiers for absolutely nothing. Those self described "best and brightest" were obviously no such thing, the worst and the dimmest might be more accurate. Bill Moyers, Clark Clifford, McGeorge Bundy and the most reprehensible, Robert Strange MacNamara; strange is right. These guys couldn't figure out even the basics--it's all twenty twenty hindsight, but here were guys who didn't understand the very central aspect of war--that it's about killing the enemy. They didn't understand the basic truth that if you're not willing to go all out to win, you're better off not playing in the game. It's hard to know whether LBJ or JFK is more to blame for getting us into that mess, though some silly folks will actually try and blame Ike, though it's well known that he abhorred the idea of a land war in Asia. The performances here are quite wonderful, but the underlying premise hurts the overall quality of the movie. It's great that it was even made, it's hard to put together a basic talking movie these days--where the story is just told simply through conversations. Perhaps the standout is Donald Sutherland as that slimeball Clifford, he plays him as an unctuous scoundrel, and accurately as well. Another flaw is the rather sympathetic portrait this movie gives of LBJ, who, if one reads Caro's biography of him, is not even remotely a positive human being--he died in ignominy, something richly deserved. This is an eminently worthwhile movie to see, but do so after becoming familiar with the folks involved, and the utterly foolish mistakes they made. The creatures protesting the war were, for all their asinine screeching and obscene tactics, right. Vietnam was a tactical mistake--and one that need not have been so were those in charge of American lives actually the "best and brightest" instead of what they actually were.

George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld could learn from this film. As Yogi Berra might say, our slow and unending fall into the quicksand that is Iraq is "déjà vu all over again." John Frankenheimer's "Path to War" chronicles the series of unfortunate decisions that Lyndon B. Johnson was forced to make that led to the enormous buildup and commitment of troops, money, and destruction in Vietnam during his presidency. The film portrays LBJ in a sympathetic light almost like a flawed but essentially good Shakespearean protagonist who succumbs to bad advice, becomes trapped by it, and almost descends into complete madness from it. I vividly remember the moment when Johnson announced he would not run again. He had become an enemy to many of us at the time, and thus the news that his term would end in less than a year gave us hope once more for the country. What is key to this film, and what opened my eyes, was his strong objections to the war itself. At each decision point he wrestled with the morality of escalation, and ultimately was led to believe that escalation would bring an end to the fighting. Indeed, history proved otherwise. What is regrettable is that this country is going through "déjà vu all over again," the only difference being that George W. Bush seems totally immune to the suffering and costs his war in Iraq has begotten. Do we see him agonizing over the injuries and deaths? Perhaps he does in private, but if so he keeps it repressed in public. Whether or not you are a supporter of President Bush, this film should be required viewing for anyone who cares about America's recent history and current position in the world.

A TV movie about President Lyndon B. Johnson? A historical drama about his "suffering" during the Vietnam war escalation? Intriguing idea, like its attempt of resurrecting from the dust of last century the climate which generated Johnson's Great Society political project... A vision that failed, even if the movie closes celebrating its persistence before the end titles. More than everything else, this is a stage drama unlikely to stand the real, terrifying drama going on outside the "halls of power" -- namely, in the bombarded and famished country of Vietnam. In the face of such a massacre (of both Americans and Vietnamese), when we are told that some 58,000 marines and TWO MILLION Asiatics died in the last four years of the war only, there is no drawing room drama that can give justice to the "mess". This was no simple "mess", it was a genocide -- something one would have thought belonging to a bloodier, more cruel past, like a new extermination of Jews. Here, the "Jews" were the Communists from South-East Asia: Vietcong, women, oldsters & children alike. America lost much more than a bloody war in Vietnam; the film partially tries to show that (like in the impressive suicide scene of a man who burns alive under the very eyes of Robert McNamara at the Pentagon), but generally speaking "Path to War" remains more interested in the affairs going on between the male trio of its protagonists: LBJ, "Bob" McNamara (whose wife had ulcer, we learn) and Clark Clifford, the man who succeeded McNamara as Secretary of Defence (a marvelously saturnine Donald Sutherland). I realize this is a historical film tailored to suit American audiences: it's just as right that they ask questions about their past and the more controversial figures of their political life; but I can assure you that, when screened outside the U.S., the film looks more like the capable drawing room caper which I mentioned before, no matter if THIS drawing room is Oval and located at the White House. All this taken into account, it's a standing tribute to its director, John Frankenheimer, and to its leading players that the film "per se" succeeds in capturing our attention and sustaining it through 165 minutes of dialogue and interior sequences, like no ordinary TV movie would be even remotely capable of doing these days. It is, in just one word, a mature conception of a historical movie, sustained by brilliant performances ands a good screenplay... The real shame is that too many of us (especially the non-Americans?) best remember LBJ through the devastating portrait Jules Feiffer made of those years in its cartoons. Forty years later, Frankenheimer gives us a different thing to muse about: we accept it from his "maestro" hands -- with just a little reserve in the back of our minds.

This movie is a painful watch for those of us who lost loved ones in Vietnam. I was just eleven when my oldest brother was killed there, but his loss still resonates through my life. The film explores the decision making in the Johnson Administration that led to horror and stalemate in Vietnam. Based on the promos for the movie, the people in charge of the production have a liberal bent, but I have to give them credit. The film tells the story straight, which is the tale of an unmitigated disaster. On a personal note, I knew Alec Baldwin in college and have followed his career closely. I disagree with his political views, but I have to give him credit for an excellent portrayal of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He displays the warts and failings without demonizing the man. The liberals would love to shift responsibility for the War away from Lyndon Johnson so they can resurrect him as the leader of the Great Society. To some extent, Johnson is portrayed as a victim of his advisors and circumstance. However, the film gives evidence to what I've felt for a long time. The buck stops with the President. At several points in the film, the military and his advisors tell him what it would take to win the war, such as cutting off the supply lines in Cambodia and bombing the dikes in North Vietnam. Johnson rejects the advice for political reasons, which may have been valid. He was afraid of reactions by Russia, China and the public. I'm not sure Johnson was correct about the reactions he feared, he had to accept them or not to proceed with the War at all. Instead, he demanded a different solution. What he got from Westmoreland and McNamara was by definition plan B, a plan that they thought "could" work not would work. Instead of an all out campaign on North Vietnam, they relied on a massive show of manpower in the South and highly selective bombing of the North. Targets were personally approved by McNamara and reviewed with the President. Hit that factory, no don't you'll hit a school up the road. The school becomes a metaphor for the slippery slope, and it eventually succumbs to US bombs. When it became clear, relatively early in the war, that it was not working they had no plan C. Only more and more of the flawed plan. The consensus these days is that the war was "unwinnable". I really don't think this film proves that case, and history simply does not provide for "do overs". The movie illustrates what we basically already knew: that Johnson was a Captain with an unsteady hand who set an unsure course, and risked foundering rather than turn back.

I expected little from this 'movie' but was pleasantly surprised. After all, it was a made for television mini series originally, it was about politics and U.S. ones at that, it was very long (both episodes were played as one cohesive piece in Queensland). On the plus side, it seemed to have an ideal cast, I like most of Alec Baldwin's work very much, I greatly admire Michael Gambon's work, Donald Sutherland needs no explanation as someone to watch, and that was just the beginning. Furthermore, I had seen the political drama "Nixon" not long ago and was greatly impressed by that (how could you not be with Anthony Hopkins at the helm); so things could have gone either way. Thankfully, my doubts were not realised and I can safely recommend this saga to any thinking person, particularly those of us like myself who actually experienced those times. I suspect to those born later it might seem somewhat like a 'boring' history lesson unless that moment in history bears any particular fascination. For Australians particularly it may be interesting as, just like with previous conflicts (World Wars I and II as well as Korea) and all wars since including Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and currently Afghanistan, we stood shoulder to shoulder with our American brothers in Vietnam, fighting and dying in battle. We knew why we as a nation were there in the thick of it, so it was very interesting indeed to see why America was there in the first place, and this docu-drama provided some of the answers.