Wag the Dog
Directed by Barry Levinson
- comedy
- drama
The story
During the final weeks of a presidential race, the President is accused of sexual misconduct. To distract the public until the election, the President's adviser hires a Hollywood producer to help him stage a fake war.
What it’s like
Crisp, fast-talking satire lit in the flat, bright tones of American government offices: fluorescent corridors, glossy conference rooms, and the washed-out blue of television screens at night. Barry Levinson keeps the camera brisk and mostly conventional, with tight two-shots during overlapping dialogue and quick cuts between Washington backrooms and the Hollywood studio where a fake war takes shape, so the satire feels like a sharp, waspish comedy rather than a visual spectacle. The score is light and jaunty, and the sound design leans on rapid, overlapping speech that rewards close listening. Its vibe is brisk, cynical and wry, a movie for an evening when you want to laugh at power without wallowing in it. The pacing is quick and clever, and the emotional register stays cool; its central figures are two sardonic professionals whose partnership slowly curdles into something more complicated. Intensity is low to moderate: the subject of sexual misconduct is handled through dialogue and spin rather than shown, and the faux-war imagery is played for irony, with a brief, unsettling sense of the real cost of manufactured conflict. For viewers who enjoy witty political comedy, Mamet-style dialogue, and cynical takes on media manipulation.
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