Live from Baghdad
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Movie Reviews of Live from Baghdad
Movie Review: Pretty good movie, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked this movie because I'm a news junkie and a fledgling journalist myself, but I also liked it because of the acting by the various leads. Micheal Keaton has refined the manic energy of his more extreme roles to portray go-getting CNN producer Robert Wiener. You'd never think that Helena Bonham-Carter is British, I had no idea she was this good an actress. David Suchet as the Iraqi official who heads the Ministry of Information is superb also. The rest of the cast likewise deserves a big hand. The question is whether or not the story is accurate or if the filmakers have taken "liberties." I tend to think that author and scriptwriter Wiener has given himself a small pat on the back in his portrayal of himself. In the movie he starts off as a hotshot relentlessly pursuing his agenda. When he inadvertantly puts the life of an oil worker in danger he finds himself questioning his journalistic ethics as well as his own morality. Ultimately his motives are noble and he is absolved of any wrongdoing. So what's the real story? Is this realism or idealization? I'd say it's some of both. In what proportions it is hard to say exactly. I'll give the movie the benefit of the doubt.
Movie Review: Good
Summary: 4 Stars
This captured the competitiveness the networks had and still have regarding war coverage. Michael Keaton is great as the somewhat overanxious and egotistical CNN producer Robert Weiner. As a journalist myself, I enjoyed seeing how the press would jockey for the story and try to get the fresh angle, the upperhand with the news consumer. Helena Carter is excellent in the film in her role as a CNN co-producer, contrasting Weiner's brash ego with good old common sense. One of the big messages in the movie is that persistence pays and CNN was the most persistent network, it appeared as the Gulf War broke out.
Movie Review: Everything But The Sound
Summary: 4 Stars
Great movie all around, except for the fact that whoever mixed it often lost the dialogue under sound effects. The BOOMS of war are loud, while the dialogue soft.Movie Review: Don't hurt your arm patting your own back
Summary: 3 Stars
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, CNN positioned a television news team in Baghdad. When the U.S. commenced the First Gulf War in January of the following year, only CNN stayed in the Iraqi capital while all other major news organizations scuttled for cover. The executive producer of the team was Robert Weiner. LIVE FROM BAGHDAD is based on the book of the same title by Robert Weiner. The film's script is by, you guessed it, Robert Weiner. Please forgive my cynicism if I think this film a self-congratulatory spasm.Perhaps the main reason to view LIVE FROM BAGHDAD is to watch Michael Keaton play Weiner. Keaton's film career began about the same time as that of Tom Hanks, yet the latter has completely eclipsed the former. Yet I wonder why this should be so since Keaton is a fine actor. We don't see enough of him on the Big Screen (much less the Small Screen that hosted this HBO production).
Helena Bonham Carter plays Ingrid Formanek, Weiner's co-producer, a role incorporated into the script for completeness, but which otherwise left me at a loss to appreciate. Early on, Weiner declares to his boss that he and Formanek are bitter rivals. Yet, the two are apparently soft on each other, a state of affairs resulting from the two of them having gotten drunk together in ten different countries while on assignment. But there's never any real chemistry between the two, and Ingrid's occasional brilliant but enigmatic smile just isn't enough to carry the character.
Most of the film is contrived suspense as the CNN team works around, or is manipulated by, the Iraqi Ministry of Information. At one point, Information Minister Naji Al-Hadithi, wonderfully played by David Suchet, cunningly uses Weiner and his crew to refute rumors that Iraqi troops had torn Kuwaiti babies from hospital incubators. (I mention this because that "atrocity" has since been revealed to have been anti-Iraqi war propaganda falsely manufactured by the Kuwaitis.) In any case, most of the film's excitement occurs at the end as CNN correspondents Peter Arnett (Bruce McGill) and John Holliman (John Lynch) eyewitness report U.S. bombing of Baghdad on the first night of the war. The pyrotechnics are spectacular.
History marches on, and America, having since toppled Saddam, is now militarily mired in a wretched place. The biggest problem with this film is that the Second Gulf War has made any news of the First passé. Does anybody care at this late date besides Robert Weiner and CNN?
Movie Review: Sound and Fury
Summary: 3 Stars
This is probably a fairly accurate representation of how newscasters operated in Iraq during the Desert Storm War, and of how they operate in general in front-line, crisis situations. I think the movie was aiming at evoking viewers' admiration for the newscasters' courage and stamina in "getting the story." It was supposed to be a paean to CNN as it established itself as a credible, round-the-clock news source during this War. But for me, the movie had the opposite effect. It showed how rash and ultimately futile most of the media people's actions on the scene were.
Everyone is either on an adrenaline rush in this movie, or else is waiting it out in a tavern getting sloshed and sloppy. There is no happy in-between when any sane, informative reporting can take place. During their "on" periods, newscasters are seen rushing down corridors, pushing each other, jostling, jockeying to get the story before other broadcast networks can get it. And the story is usually some canned speech by Saddam Hussein or one of his cabinet members. People stoke their sense of self-importance by surrounding themselves with ringing phones. They agonize over power outages. It's all frenetic activity - signifying nothing.
Because when the War really starts, all that we get out of these many reporters' efforts are exclamations announcing another SCUD missile hit. We get "Wow! That was a big explosion! Wow, another one! The sky is lit up!" People risked their lives to tell the listening American public that a bomb just lit up the sky?
It seems there would have been opportunities for intrepid reporters to go out into Baghdad and get stories that would really have mattered - stories that would have enlightened the American public about the climate of opinion there, about conditions among Iraqi citizens, and about reasons for going to War or not going to War. But virtually nothing like that comes across. In the end, it all comes down to, "Wow, that was a big one!"
So I do think this movie is worth watching, but probably not for the reasons it was made. Instead of coming away from the film with an illustration of how good and worthy our reporters are, you, like me, may come away with an illustration of how far our news coverage needs to advance in order to be a really useful tool in the democratic decision-making process.