Excellent film with images from other great films

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2006)

I greatly enjoyed the film. The influence of Coppola is noteworthy. The CIA technicians efforts to get information from the video and audio was reminiscent of Coppola's The Conversation.
The larger comparison is with Coppola's Godfather trilogy. In a sense this movie inverts the Godfather. Don Corleone emphasized family over country, Wilson abandons everything for his country. The scene with Pesci in Miami was a recreation of Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth in Miami in the Godfather II. So many of the details were borrowed in that scene.
DeNiro as director brought aspects from a prior effort "a Bronx Tale" the focus on a destructive father/son relationship and a young mans interest in an inter-racial relationship.
This film is best enjoyed by an audience that has lived through the cold war, and remembers the feelings of the Bay of Pigs incident and the Berlin Wall. the use of film clips of Kennedy and Eisenhower brought realism to the film.
Many familiar with history will recognize real people and real events being fictionalized. I would have preferred that the real and familiar names were retained for the major characters. If we can see Kennedy and Eisenhower why not use the name Allen Dulles or Bill Donaldson.
Nevertheless I enjoyed this powerful drama. I like films that pay homage to other great films.