Death of a President
Newmarket Films | Release Date: October 27, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
49
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
16
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Death of a President is celluloid mediocrity. It's neither interesting nor convincing. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk 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
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Disappointingly, Death of a President shrinks from its promise as a piece of genuinely radical or adventurous speculative fiction. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. 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
50
PremiereEthan 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
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The flaw in Death of a President isn't one of morality. It's one of dramatic interest. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn 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
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
A technically inventive, thoughtful, but otherwise not particularly earth-shattering movie. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Though the blending of archival footage into a faux documentary is occasionally clever, ultimately it's banal and unconvincing. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack 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
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan 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
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
By the end, there's nothing to admire except Range's technical virtuosity. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Turns out to be rather less than the sum of its headlines. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene 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
50
SlateDana Stevens
Politically noncommittal and dull. But that's exactly the problem with this 90-minute piece of cinematic trompe l'oeil. Read full review
40
The New York TimesA.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
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