Wag the Dog

Plot synopsis:
The movie starts with a scandal at the White House where the unseen and nameless The President of the USA is accused of fondling a young girl scout visiting the Oval Office just a few weeks before Election Day. Being the third party observers, we know the truth, he's guilty.Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro), a notorious political "spin doctor" is called to a secret midnight meeting at the White House underground command bunker by Winifred Ames (Anne Heche), one of the President's many advisers, where she asks for his help to engineer a way and a means to divert the news of the scandal when it breaks in the newspapers the next day. Brean suggests creating an artificial war for television only to distract the American public and let the President get on with the job at hand... thus protecting the free world.Brean and Ames fly to Hollywood where Conrad hires brash Hollywood producer Stanley Motts (Dustin Hoffman), whom worked for Conrad several times in the past, to help fabricate this non-existent war with the selected country of Albania to divert the public with the real news about the President's extra-marital trysts. Motts is glad to help out of blind loyalty to service for his country.At an all-night gathering at Motts' Hollywood home, he assembles a team of loyal specialists whom include creative consultant Liz Butsky (Andrea Martin), country-western singer Johnny Dean (Willie Nelson), and entrepreneur Fad King (Dennis Leary) to help out fabricate the means for the "war with Albania". The next day, Motts and Brean venture to a studio back lot that Motts rents out where he hires a young, up-and-promising actress named Tracy Lime (Kirsten Dunst) to play an Albanian peasant girl carrying a CGI cat through the green-screen set up of a destroyed Albanian village. The filmed scene makes the evening news and brings up public intrest in the war.However the very next day, Brean and Ames are riding in a limo when they are pulled over and detained by CIA agents led by Charles Young (William H. Macy) who confronts them with fabricating the non-existent war with Albania. Brean manages to talk the CIA agents to releasing them by insinuating that the CIA knows little about what is really going on with the world behind the scenes. Mr. Young releases them, but the next day, the CIA leaks the story about the war in Albania being over and focusing the attention back on the President. Everyone is upset, but Motts downplays the setback by declaring "this is nothing" (the start of a running joke that gets increasingly hilarious as the movie progresses), and proposes an "Act Two" to spin another fabricated story about a secret American unit stuck behind enemy lines and the missing-in-action story about a fellow American left behind in Albania.Motts's team of experts again go back into action by constructing a theme song about the missing soldier left behind as 'Old Shoe' sung by Johnny Dean as a 1970s pop song. Soon, the American public becomes consumed once again by the war and patriot fever as Election Day counts down and the President's popularity rises again as the public quickly forgets about the secret White House tryst.However, more setbacks occur when Motts and Brean suggest bringing in a candidate to impersonate their non-existent war hero as an image to the public. But at a secret midnight meeting on a airport runway, the military police arrive where they agree to release a dangerous mental patient who once served in the military because he has the same last name, "Shoe", to portray the war hero of the conflict. The military release Sgt. William "the Old Shoe" Schumann (Woody Harrelson) into their custody as Motts, Brean, and Ames fly away in a private plane through a raging thunderstorm towards Washington DC to welcome 'Old Shoe' back from Albania.However the plane crashes (off-camera) killing the pilots and stranding Motts, Brean and Ames along with the deranged Schumann in a rural part of South Dakota ("this is nothing" Motts quotes yet again). The four of them are forced to hitch a ride on a tractor from a passing farmer to a gas station to call for help. It is there when Schumann attempts to sexually assault the wife of the gas station owner which results in him getting shot dead in self defense by the owner.Despite this latest setback, (Motts again relates his quote "this is nothing") the trio return to Washington and they have the dead Schumann buried in Arlington National Cemetery as a war hero killed in the plane crash, and the funeral is broadcast all over the national news.Election Day comes and goes. The President defeats his rival Senator John Neal (Craig T. Nelson, in an uncredited cameo) and is thus re-elected president. As Motts and Brean celibrate their victory for a job well done, they watch a TV broadcast about the President's re-election campaign. Everything seems fine... until Motts sees that the media are crediting the president's election win to his tired "Don't change horses in mid stream" campaign slogan, rather than Motts's elaborate plans. Motts announces that he will call the media to "set them straight," despite Brean's warning him that he is "toying with his life." When Motts refuses to back down and walks out wanting to take the credit for the President's successful re-election, Brean very reluctantly orders a nearby secret service agent to do what they have to do. Motts is seen being taken away by several agents to a waiting car.The next morning, Brean reads a news report about Motts being found dead at his Hollywood home from an apparent "heart attack"... strongly impying that Brean and Ames and their associates had Motts killed and covered it up to prevent him from talking to the press about the truth of the fabricated war. Brean never less goes to attend Motts' funeral anyway.In an ironic tragicomedy ending, movie ends with a news report about a violent incident in Albania, but it is unclear whether this is a true event and that a very real war between the US and Albania has started, or simply a continuation of the fictional war.

Tags: entertaining, comedy, satire, murder

Review:
And he does that very well in this movie; at the beginning, we may think Conrad Brean and Stanley Motss are real sleazebags, but at the end, while we deplore the action they take of faking a war just for political ends, we can't quite dismiss them either.Of course, a lot of that has to do with the performances of Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman (Anne Heche is also a standout as Winnifred Ames, the increasingly bemused presidential aide).
Naturally DeNiro and Hoffman are guaranteed to excel in a film like this, but good work is also done by people like Heche, Denis Leary, William H.
Conrad employs Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to produce a war in Albania to divert the media away from the real story.This was made before Clinton was accused of misconduct with Monica Lewinsky and the subsequent re-start of military action in Iraq.
However even before this happened it was still a very sharp and very good satire on political spin, but also managing to have a dig at Hollywood movie types.
Hoffman is good sending up Hollywood producers well and drawing parallels between the creation of a film and the creation of political news stories.
The cast also has a series of cameos and extended cameos who add both humour and quality to the film - Willie Nelson, Denis Leary, James Belsuhi, William H Macy etc.Recently in the UK we've had huge problems with spin doctors running the Labour Government - to the extent that 11th September was described as "good" by one as it gave them the chance to bury several bad news stories that they had stored up.
This film doesn't make hugely serious points but it does make you think about how the media is used to shape public perception and make us think what those in charge want us to think.Overall a very funny, very clever satire that has a great cast, the only criticism being that it stretches it's point a little too far with the "old shoe" section..
Prior to "Wag the Dog" my answer would be "no", but watching, and now re-watching it for a second time in the past week, this film could be watched today, watched next year, or even watched prior to the next four elections, and it would continue to feel current, real, and modern in today's political/cinematical world.
As we continue to allow CNN to give us our news, this film will remain as vivid as America's apple pie.Act I: The Chemistry of the Characters Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman could play chess for three hours, and it would capture my attention from beginning to end.
Politicians try and deceive as many of the people for as much of the time as they think they can get away with, and the media will go along with such deception for as long as it is in their interest.`Wag the Dog' has some sharp points to make, and there is a very good performance from Dustin Hoffman as the Hollywood producer Stanley Motss.
As the calibre of the talent involved would suggest Wag The Dog is a very well acted and directed film, however for some strange reason it isn't a particularly satisfying one.Perhaps that is mainly due to the fact that it is somewhat of a one joke idea, or maybe it's due to the fact that with current events as they are it's all too plausible and the whole thing of late is somewhat comically overexposed.
From the fistful of great performances from Robert Deniro, Anne Heche, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson and especially Dustin Hoffman who seems to be relishing his role here, to the well played supporting roles filled out by the likes of William H.
It also has a sharp, amusing script (by Hilary Henkin & David Mamet, based on the novel "American Hero" by Larry Beinhart) going for it and Barry Levinson's direction is top notch, but despite being quite entertaining, it also seems too slight by half, and just not focused or funny enough to quite make everything work successfully at the end of the day.
Sure, there are some far fetched things but overall the movie leaves the impression like this is something that could actually happen in real life or already maybe has happened.But "Wag the Dog" is more entertaining than anything.
Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman are great in their second movie together ("Sleepers" was the first which was also directed by Barry Levinson and they can now be seen together again in "Meet the Fockers").
The movie is almost than 20 years old and yet it rings true today, although the political outrages of the day that it satirizes seem tame compared to what has transpired in reality since.Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro deliver priceless performances.
Whether it was Bush Sr. coming up with the Gulf War to distract people from the Savings and Loans scandal, Clinton threatening military action against Iraq to distract people from the Lewinsky thing, Bush Jr. invading Iraq as a we-can't-find-Osama diversion, or the current threats against Iran, this movie is the hilarious but unfortunate truth.The plot of course has spin doctor Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro) teaming up with Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to fabricate a war, so as to distract the country from the president's sexual follies (and to think that the movie came out around the same time as you-know-what).
Writers Hilary Henkin, David Mamet & director Barry Levinson deserve an ovation to attempt a film like 'Wag The Dog'.
A Washington spin doctor who, mere days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer to construct a fake war with Albania.
In a similar manner, "Wag the Dog" offers up the same kind of black comedy satire, with great insight into how the modern, amoral, political PR mind works.
Make a Top 10 list of Hoffman and De Niro performances and movies, Wag the Dog would appear on all of them.
This film has a neat enough premise; the US president gets caught with his hand in the underage cookie jar right before election time, and his hatchetman Conrad Brean (De Niro) goes out to divert public attention.
Dear lord, this film looked almost perfect, great reviews, good cast, good story, but it was all done so messily, it looked like they put the movie together in about 2 days, characters suddenly appear and then re-appear without any explanation whatsoever, the plot doesnt take time to explain itself and why the hell would they cast Craig T.
This movie tells the story of "spin doctors" who create a diversion to get heat off the President of the U.S. In this case, the President was accused of having sex with a young girl in the White House (ironically, this was made before the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton affair!) so a spin doctor - played by Robert De Niro - is hired to find a way out of the predicament before election day.
His answer is to create a fake war with Albania.Lest you think this is the rarest of all Hollywood films - anti-Democrat, or even politically impartial story - no, it stays true to form by making disparaging remarks only about Conservatives (Reagan, Bush, Nixon, etc.).
Along with Winifred Ames (Anne Heche), he recruits Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to manufacture a fake war.This is a brilliant satire with just enough realism for the audience to question whether this is actual reality.
I did not give this movie a higher rating because the top rated cast - De Niro, Hoffman and Heche only gave average performances and the direction was also average; there was enough entertainment though to keep you interested until the end.
The other hardly ever noticed aspect of this movie is the brilliant work of Barry Levinson - it's not only the guiding of every actor and every actress, not only the perfect pacing of the plot - it's the amazing control he exerts over the look of the film.
After the U.S. President is implicated in a sex scandal at the White House, with less than two weeks to go before he faces re-election for his second-term in office, a professional "Mr. Fix-It" is called upon by a presidential adviser to do a fast spin on the problem; determining that the nation's attention must be diverted to more pressings matters, he enlists the aid of an experienced movie producer and his troupe to fake a media-covered war with Albanian terrorists.
Robert De Niro plays the White House equivalent of Mr Wolf from Pulp Fiction Conrad Brean, his role is to bluff the media for just long enough to get past the election, where the President (never seen in the film) had a massive lead in the polls at least before the incident.De Niro and his team never pretend the President didn't commit the act - only that they must cover it up - so Brean decides that the public will only be sufficiently be distracted by a misdemeanor this large by an even larger situation.
They do this by spreading rumours through various sources that the US security has been threatened by another country, in this case Albania, and that America must band together to ward off this enemy.This comes as a surprise to Albania of course as no such peril exists, but I guess that for a film such as this an element of farce is required.Wag the Dog is never especially funny, there are a few chuckles to be had but the main pleasure is derived from some fairly smart dialogue and how the large team that is ultimately amassed deals with inconvenience and developments that aren't in their favour.
Of course being a movie nothing runs smoothly, the CIA and the opposition party see to that, but it is how Motss and Brean adapt and react that provides the interest.Motss is initially reluctant to help, given that he won't get any public credit regardless of how the ploy works, but as things develop his relentless positivity is pretty amusing, it doesn't matter how bad things look, he is still there saying "This is nothing!" and coming up with yet another counter-move.De Niro plays the straight man for much of the film to Hoffman's egotistical Hollywood bigwig, but you sense he is not a man to be messed with and will do anything to make sure that his side wins.As the credits were initially rolling my wife said something along the lines of "Wow, everyone is in this", and indeed the cast does boast Kirstin Dunst, Denis Leary, William H Macy and Woody Harrelson, as well as Anne Heche as Brean's loyal yet seemingly a little naive aide.The final third of the film contains some plot points that seem a little bit too extreme even for a satire such as this, especially given the intricate planning and attention to detail given to early situations, but overall what I went away thinking was "well that seemed way over the top, but no more than the Lewinsky scandal", and in my mind that is probably the most scary part.Stuff like this probably goes on in America way more than we realise, and that we as the global public probably believe way more of what we are told than we should at times.Final Rating – 6.5 / 10.
I do not want to say that a movie cannot or must not be funny AND serious at the same time, but in "Wag the Dog" there is an abyss with a very thin bridge between the two aspects, and it is not very good for style.I am not going to argue whether Americans or other nations are actually so stupid en masse as to be so ignorant of the outside world and to believe everything their politicians say on TV; maybe, they are, after all (though I personally would like to hope they aren't).
So the presidents right hand man (or in the case girl) Heche gets the presidential adviser De Niro in to help fix the problem, and with election on in 11 days it isn't going to be easy to fix.De Niro gets cutthroat & eccentric Hollywood producer Hoffman in on the scene and to divert the countries attention away from the sex scandal they decide to create a war.
Hiring actresses to play young girls in the bombed wreckage and bringing in singers to create full-hearted songs to bring America back on the president's side, the three amigos (Heche, De Niro and Hoffman) actually do a magnificent job.Watch the movies for the laughs, watch the movies for the music (which unfortunately is not on CD) but overall watch the movie to escape reality and to have a great hour and a half.An amazing movie a solid 9/10*I would like to personally congratulate the actors on a remarkable performance..
Although it wasn't a very successful film, I think Dustin Hofmann, Robert de Niro, Anne Heche and especially Woody Harrelson were fantastic!.
In it, a veteran spin doctor hires a Hollywood mega-producer to help start a false war, in an effort to divert attention from the President's alleged underage affair with a "Firefly girl." The spin doctor is played by Robert De Niro.
Although De Niro stole the show in "Analyze This," Hoffman does the same in "Wag the Dog," creating a very memorable character to add to his resume.The movie was written by David Mamet and Hilary Henken.
In a subtler way the film bites at Hollywood in the same way that "Get Shorty" and "Adaptation" did.With Barry Levinson's career now being harmed by disasters such as "Envy," "Wag the Dog" is good proof that he still can direct a very solid comedy -- he just needs to learn to turn down certain scripts in favor of better ones..
I won't necessarily disagree with either of those comments, but both have been done to death, and the way Barry Levinson chooses to meld the two isn't very interesting, and certainly not funny.Hoffman and DeNiro are two of the most celebrated actors around, but this movie just isn't a good use of their talents.
De Niro was great in it as well (obviously) and I was surprised at the amount of people in the supporting cast: Anne Heche, Woody Harrelson etc etc...A good film, quite a witty humour, found myself giggling quite a lot - mainly at Hoffman's character.
Rather than resign or take responsibility, White House spin doctors(led by Robert De Nero & Anne Heche) instead contact a Hollywood producer(Dustin Hoffman, quite funny) to direct an elaborate hoaxed war with Albania, in hopes that the nation will rally behind their incumbent president, and forget/forgive the sex scandal.
When the president is involved in scandal shortly before the election, a Hollywood producer is brought in to manufacture a war in Albania to distract from the scandal and that the President can end."Wag the Dog" has a great premise that was prescient; before the film was released, President Clinton was involved in the sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky, and he threatened military action in Iraq.
Maybe it's based on the premise that the American people are fairly dumb, and if you don't agree with that, you probably won't like it.Nevertheless, "Wag the Dog" puts forth a provocative idea and gets you thinking, and it's great to see Hoffman and DeNiro as two clever albeit sleazy people who believe the end justifies the means..
But this success is a result of the good performance of many great actors like Dustin Hoffman (as a star especially in the comedy genre), Robert De Niro or Denis Leary ,too.The U.S. president (Michael Belson) is hoping of a reelection.
For this plan he gets help by the big Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) who creates for example video footage which is then shown in the media.The message of the movie is clear: The politician uses the media by manipulating and faking the truth to improve the image of themselves.
And because of the great performance for example of Dustin Hoffman, who is perfectly cast with the role of Stanley Motss, as the producer who is always relaxed, funny but also focused on his work, the movie reaches to convey this message in a quite funny way.
A political spin doctor, Conrad Brean (Robert de Niro), and a Hollywood producer, Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), both well endowed with chutzpah, set out to create the illusion that the USA has gone to war with Albania, as a distraction from a Presidential sexual peccadillo.
Like the Blair Witch movies, this film makes us consider the question of what is real and what is not, what is genuine and what is hype.Hollywood, politics, spin doctors, and human nature are all on display here and get royally satirized..
excellent, timed performances by DeNiro, Heche, and Hoffman raise this movie to orchestral proportions.watching Wag the Dog is very much like listening to a good symphony..
Wag the Dog. A White House intelligence team, just before the election, tries to distract the public attention from the President's sex scandal by hiring a stand-out Hollywood producer to create the impression of conflict, then war in Albania.Waspish and slightly bitchy political satire that became unexpectedly topical shortly after its release; it has a certain elegance of wit, but never really bites sharp enough, and its gradual self-adulation and messy style leave little to impress afterwards..
The idea that anything seen or heard on the news might be a hoax, the comical punch line of this movie, may not be so funny after all.Wag the Dog, directed by Barry Levinson, also starring Woody Harrelson, is a political satire', which becomes less than satisfying,.
Wag the Dog, a political satire of a fake war between USA and Albania, directed by Barry Levinson.