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Death of a President
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 24 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Mystery | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Simon Finch
Gabriel Range
Directed by: Gabriel Range
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 27, 2006
DVD: April 3, 2007
Running Time: 93 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Language(s): English / Arabic
Summary
RATING: R for brief violent images
Starring Hend Ayoub, Brian Boland, Becky Ann Baker, Robert Mangiardi, Jay Patterson, Jay Whittaker, Michael Reilly Burke, and James Urbaniak
Death of a President follows the investigation of the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush in October 2007. Combining real archival footage with a credible but fictional story, this film presents a fascinating and thought-provoking political thriller. (Newmarket Films)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The movie IS a provocation, but not a glib or ideologically myopic one.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Many of its fiercest detractors may be surprised to find that it's a far more sobering piece of speculative fiction than they might have imagined.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's more than simply a well-crafted piece of fake history.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Given the controversy, which strongly suggested that the filmmakers had it in for President Bush, the film's biggest shocker may be how kind Range and coscreenwriter Simon Finch are to him.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The excitingly well-made Death of a President imagines the assassination of President Bush as a way of analyzing political violence. And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, sight unseen, has labeled it despicable.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
A masterly piece of documentary chicanery that kills George W. Bush without once pandering to his legions of ill-wishers.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Range has a marvelous feel for the clichés and conventions of TV-news documentary, and the tone of mournful elegy he strikes here is both convincing and -- believe me, I'm shocked to be writing this -- moving.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
There's something foul about staging the assassination of a sitting president in order to push a political agenda that could just as easily have been put forward without resorting to such sensationalism.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The flaw in Death of a President isn't one of morality. It's one of dramatic interest.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
Politically noncommittal and dull. But that's exactly the problem with this 90-minute piece of cinematic trompe l'oeil.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Aside from satisfying some kind of ghoulish curiosity about how such an incident could possibly happen, there's precious little in Death of a President to justify the extremity of its central conceit.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
By the end, there's nothing to admire except Range's technical virtuosity.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
As skillful an artist as Range clearly is, he has gone to an awful lot of trouble to make a painfully obvious point about threats to civil liberties in a post-9/11 world.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
A technically inventive, thoughtful, but otherwise not particularly earth-shattering movie.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Though the blending of archival footage into a faux documentary is occasionally clever, ultimately it's banal and unconvincing.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
D.O.A.P. would be more effective, and more entertaining, if it took a cue from "Dr. Strangelove" and used Sterling Hayden's paranoid, quick-triggered Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper as the model for Cheney to get more outlandish behavior from him.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Death of a President wants to function as a mindless thriller that eventually makes us think -- and only after the film is over question the form that encouraged us to be mindless. These are incompatible agendas, and in the end neither is fully successful.
Read Full Review >Premiere Ethan Alter
There's no question that Death of a President fulfills its objective as a conversation starter, but as a movie, it's sketchy at best.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Death of a President is celluloid mediocrity. It's neither interesting nor convincing.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
As convincing as the manipulated footage of the President's death in Chicago in October 2007 is, the movie itself cannot be more unconvincing in its approach.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Disappointingly, Death of a President shrinks from its promise as a piece of genuinely radical or adventurous speculative fiction.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Dramatically inert but a minor techno-miracle, Range's movie is a faux documentary with fake talking heads and seamless digital effects.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Some will find profundity in the film's reversals and revelations, but its provocations are not particularly insightful or original. The Death of a President is, in the end, neither terribly outrageous nor especially heroic; it’s a thought experiment that traffics in received ideas.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Is Death of a President plausible? As political prognostication, perhaps. As a TV documentary, no way in hell. What's missing is shapeliness, suspense, narrative cunning, visual flair--in short, art. Are we really to believe that a network of the future would broadcast such a barbiturate?
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Depictions of an aide talking about her hospital vigil and her words of comfort to a distraught Laura Bush are creepy and exploitative -- and borderline disgusting.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
The only thing that's shocking about Death of a President is how boring it is.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 24 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
PnArdy PnArdy gave it a9:
Great documentary style movie portraying the hypothetical day of assassination of president G.W. Bush in the future. It's a movie-statement that sets new boundaries and redefines the documentary genre.
Chad S. gave it a4:
Rather than emulate(to a certain degree) Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line", this filmmaker misses a golden opportunity to turn "Death of a President" into a full-blown propaganda film. Imagine if a Warren Commission-like report expressed on film were to broadcast on American airwaves in order to frame some innocent foreigner for the murder of President George Walker Bush. This mock-doc's agenda should've been to protect the killer(s) and hide the truth, instead we're subjected to a rambling(and boring) testimony of the case's history(there are too many suspects; too many dead ends) before an Iraqi male is brought to justice and charged with Bush's assasination. Because of his ethnicity, a canny filmmaker would try to frame him, but "Death of a President['s]" liberal heart bleeds too much on its sleeve and strives for exoneration, as a way to comment on racial profiling and the legalized tyranny of the Patriot Act. "Death of a President" doesn't do enough with its most valuable resource: Vice-President Dick Cheney. If the film insinuated that he took out a sitting president, now you're talking provocation.
Will B. gave it an8:
I have to say that the number of Americans, primarily, that are so DEEPLY offended by a work of FICTION involving the death of one person, who's ultimately responsible for the deaths of 10's of 1000's, is kind of puzzling. Hillary C. voices her outrage, as does the reviewer above from Ohio, (06's 'Florida' to ensure coup #2). It's a work of fiction about one sorry excuse of a human dying! Who cares what his position in life is!? Why does that elevate the mere premise of this event to such levels of horror and outrage? Why isn't this level of OUTRAGE being voiced at images of thousands of ACTUAL, not fictional,Soldiers, or of over 60,000 regular people like myself and this reviewer, all dying over the last 4 years for an illegal war? This movie, while giving a sobering WARNING to any wing nuts who think the death of the Puppet Boy would be a GREAT thing, doesn't strike me as some unimaginable horror, just a "What If?" piece of fiction. That the aforementioned wing nuts could use this movie to teach themselves that the alternative to Bush, an unfettered Darth Cheney, would be FAR worse, perhaps if anything, this film will actually prove to give Duh-Byuh a little more protection from the Timmothy McVeigh segment of the population. Cuz WHO isn't scared of Darth Cheney?
Jason L. gave it a6:
Entertainment wise, I think the very premise of this film doomed it from the beggining. It became distracting when one found himself trying to separate fact from fiction. Additionally, the movie lacked elements that make a good movie: plot, protagonists, action, drama. I did appreciate however, the intelligence that went behind making the film. It did NOT endorse the death of Bush, but rather looked at the world had as if he had died. It did make me think about how many people think a dead president will benifit or destroy this country, and I believe the movie is directed at them.
Matthew M gave it a7:
It was an alright film; I think the premise outweighs the execution. I can understand if people found it uninteresting, or non earth-shattering as there was very little insight to be take from this. No, instead it's an interesting premise of wishful thinking people who rally against Bush would want to see. That's why I enjoyed it for the most part, but amazed there are so many people willing to give it 0-3 because it was "boring" to them; Sorry, but that just means they were convinced on not liking it before they even saw it (if they saw it) because of their political agenda.
Michael gave it a9:
A fine film that's only slightly about a Bush assassination. It's more about the nation he (and we) made. The crime's aftermath turns into a rather profound cross between "Rashomon" and 1940s film noir. It ultimately suggests that almost anyone might have had some motive, and might have shared some of the culpability.
Gerrick C. gave it a3:
The film is a resounding bore with very few redeeming qualities. Quite honestly, UK film producers coming up with a fictional assassination of the United States President is idiotic. Please do not see this film.
