Fair and balanced film - unlike the characters.

Rating: 7/10 (2 February 2008)

The allegory in this serious piece from George Clooney would only be hard to spot if you were locked in an isolation chamber and were not watching the movie  otherwise it kind of hits you in the face with its politics. Is that a bad thing? Well, that depends on your politics, I guess. Personally, I kinda liked it. Whilst blunt, I thought it managed to avoid being preachy, and the actors all get chance to act. There are a couple of nice side-steps, and the characters all feel like real people. Oddly, it's mostly Clooney who looks somehow out of place, but that's a small gripe. This is the sort of film that is nobody's favourite film, and will probably be forgotten by history, but it's a nice little history lesson and, worryingly, will probably resonate with the times more often than it doesn't.