Live from Baghdad
by Mick Jackson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Suchet, Helena Bonham Carter, Joshua Leonard, Lili Taylor, Michael KeatonDirector: Mick Jackson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 108 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: HBO Video
Movie Reviews of Live from Baghdad
Movie Review: Inaccurate Film Peddles Propaganda
Summary: 2 Stars
This film is well acted and, if you're not interested in history or truth, suspenseful as a work of fiction. However, since it it supposed to be based on factual events, anything that might be a blatant lie within it would mar the veracity of the rest of the material.
Forget the fact that the U.S. was friends with Saddam and helped fund him and give him weapons that our government was well aware that he was murdering people with. Forget, too, the fact that at the same time the horrors of Saddam were transpiring, the US was supporting other dictators, most notably Suharto in Indonesia--we gave him weapons knowing that he was also slaughtering people. This film ignores all that to portray Saddam (not unfairly) as a monster, by relying in part on a story that was a public relations invention. A 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified at the time as Nayirah "to protect her from reprisals," in August 1990 told a story of Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators, a story invented for the London Daily Telegraph by a Kuwaiti housing minister and then spread by the PR firm Hill and Knowlton, which received $10.7 million from the Kuwaiti government for this and other services.
The girl spoke at a faux congressional hearing located in Hill and Knowlton's Washington, D.C., office. Craig Fuller (George Bush Sr.'s chief of staff when Bush was VP) ran the PR firm. Nayirah, a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to Washington, was coached by the firm, and her testimony was used by Bush Sr. to help sell the war. The story was revealed as false after the war by ABC's John Martin and denounced as a hoax.
The events of this false story are never challenged in the film but are portrayed as if true. It's interesting to note that this film was released in 2002, when Bush Jr. was just beginning his attempts to again turn attention to Saddam and use false stories to justify a new war on Iraq. Given the pro-Bush media sentiment of the time, one wonders if this film was HBO's contribution to the war effort.
Summary of Live from Baghdad
A group of cnn reporters wrestle with journalistic ethics and the life-and-death perils of reporting during the gulf war. Studio: Hbo Home Video Release Date: 05/30/2006 Rating: NrLive from Baghdad tells the story of how CNN became the only news agency to cover the first Gulf War from within Baghdad. Michael Keaton stars as CNN executive producer Robert Wiener, who took a small news team into the Iraq capital after the invasion of Kuwait. Along with producer Ingrid Formanek (Helena Bonham Carter), Wiener jousted with teams from other networks, fought with antiquated equipment, and wrestled with Iraqi attempts to control information--in particular with an information minister named Naji (the outstanding David Suchet). After numerous setbacks, Wiener's team triumphed when they had the only connection from inside Baghdad as the American forces began dropping bombs. Though a TV-movie about TV news coverage is a bit incestuous, Live from Baghdad makes for compelling viewing; the script and direction are taut, performances are excellent all around, and the perspective on the war is multilayered. --Bret Fetzer
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