Directed by Errol Morris

Both its limitations and its ultimate strength lie in the fact that this is 108 mins of McNamara, uninterrupted and practically unchecked. Seldom does Morris interject, except to overlay McNamara’s excuses, deflections, and understatements with subtly contradictory imagery. That ostensibly hands-off approach brought an unabashed, almost endearing Texan authenticity in The Thin Blue Line. Here, it allows a Washington bureaucrat with a soul as damned as any to perform a careful routine of legacy reconstruction, coated with a quasi-honesty. 

In many ways, The Fog of War plays like a fascinating companion piece to the countercultural depictions of Oliver Stone and the like. That dark, bureaucratic higher force which drones over a Platoon, or a JFK, or an Apocalypse Now becomes personified as McNamara stares down the barrel of an Interrotron camera.

He is entrancing, and almost convincing— but he’s full of shit. At the epilogue, Morris locks in on what they’d been circling around: “After you left the Johnson administration, why didn’t you speak out against the Vietnam War?” He hits a wall. “I’m not going to say any more than I have,” McNamara responds. Morris starts again: “Do you feel in any way responsible for the War? Do you feel guilty?” He hits another. “I don’t want to go any further with this discussion,” says McNamara. 

Morris flew too close to the sun—he asked for an honest, straightforward answer.