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Death of a President

Starring: Hend Ayoub, Brian Boland, Becky Ann Baker, Robert Mangiardi, Jay Patterson

Directed by: Gabriel Range

RS: 1.5of 4 Stars Average User Rating: 3of 4 Stars

2006 Newmarket Films Drama

This is the fake documentary you've been hearing about. The one in which British filmmaker Gabriel Range gooses his computer to make it look like George Bush, visiting Chicago in 2007, has just been assassinated. Look, I don't want to see Dubya dead, just departed, from the White House, that is. Sen. Hillary Clinton thinks the very idea of the movie is "despicable." I think the failure of the movie as drama or political provocation makes it unworthy of fuss. Range stages the details leading up to the shooting with some skill. But the follow-up, in which the Cheney administration ignores the evidence pointing to a father who lost his son in Iraq and tries to pin the killing on a Syrian in order to push Patriot Act III through Congress, is shopworn propaganda. The fact of the Bush years far outdoes Range's dull fiction. The only thing that shook me was the idea of Cheney as president. Now that is the stuff of nightmares.