Fog of War
Battle of the beleaguered

// The skinny: A documentary reviewing ex-secretary of state Robert McNamara's life as it coincided with wars and the lessons he learned from his experiences.

// Review: Documentaries are typically a bit slow, boring, and visually uninteresting (particularly if they are about a person vs fireworks or an exotic location) because of the film nature's genre. While this wasn't edge of your seat, for a documentary it was fascinating especially if you have any interest in war. McNamara served as an analyst in WW2, became the youngest president in the history of Ford Motors(basically responsible for the seat belt), and then was heavily recuited to be the secretary of defense by JFK. The height of his fame (or infamy) came when his tenure overlapped with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Viet Nam. McNamara never wanted the job. His strengths were in making key adjustments based on facts and analysis, was terse and not a media darling. Thus he was hated, branded as arrogant, ignorant, war mongering, condescending, when mostly he was misunderstood. Especially with Iraq going on it's a favorite American pastime to play arm chair political pundit. But this documentary gives an interesting behind the scenes insight that reveal that often we don't have all of the facts about people and situations and commonly jump to the wrong conclusion, and unjustly fan the flames of judgement along with the media.

/ McNamara chronicles his war experience up to Viet Nam, and how they shaped him to influenced the decisions he made regarding that war. The film's pacing is helped by laying out 11 lessons that he has learned. Some seem a little esoteric while others at first seem intuitive and yet shown to have been ignored to dire consequences. It's obvious that he paid a high price regarding his family and psyche by taking on this role as a public servant (he went from being the highest paid executive in the world to $25,000 a year). There were choices he was powerless to prevent and choices that he regretted making. Admittedly he made mistakes but never the less was proud to serve America with the best of his ability and conscience.

// Wrap up: People with any fascination with war will eat this up. For everyone else it's sure to at least raise questions, evoke a response, and found interesting.

Entertainment rating: 3