The War Room

The Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside of the Arkansas governor’s presidential campaign, with Carville playing Huck Finn to Stephanopoulos’ Tom Sawyer, these lively presences lit up Clinton’s drive to the White House and turn The War Room into a tiptop political documentary that offers a candid and entertaining backstage look at a most unlikely electoral Juggernaut. Read full review

Edited with whiplash intensity into 92 of the movie year's tightest minutes, Room is arguably the breeziest political documentary ever. [3 Nov 1993, p.7D]

It was riveting, not for any great insider insight, but because Carville turned out to be a much more interesting, more complex and more "authentic" character than Clinton himself. The cliches real, messy candidate and ersatz, cold-eyed handler - were reversed. Clinton made brief, bland appearances on the sidelines. Carville was the - heart of the drama: intense, passionate, emotional, funny. Carville laughed, cried, shouted. Clinton just smiled and waved. [10 Nov 1993, p.12]

It’s a fascinating time capsule, catching a new, empowered Democratic machine in its infancy. Read full review

By the end of the movie, you realize that these two have devised nothing less than a media-age alternative to the Nixon era’s dirty tricks. The War Room is a giddy celebration of clean tricks. Read full review

It's an exhilarating film, largely because of Carville's charisma. [7 Jan 1994]

A revealing film and an invaluable document. Read full review

Watching Carville and Stephanopoulos manipulate the media by playing both footsie and hardball makes for a wickedly funny and irreverent lesson in ’90s power politics. Read full review

An excellent documentary film. [3 Nov 1993]

Perhaps the documentary The War Room will bring a deeper dimension to the profession's image. At the very least, it may dispel the notion that campaign managers pervert the course of democracy with behind-the-scenes omniscience; the surprise in the film is that they're often as confused as their candidates sometimes seem to be. Read full review

The buddy-film dynamic between braniac lead strategist James Carville and telegenic communications director George Stephanopoulos provides The War Room with a compelling through line and emotional cornerstone. Read full review

Although it is a historical document, The War Room plays out as a "buddy" film with two men - James Carville and George Stephanopoulos - emerging as figures charismatic enough to carry this feature-length movie...What we see is fascinating, funny and revelatory. [18 Nov 1993]

If The War Room were a fictional feature, it would be a sure-fire star-making vehicle for James Carville. President Clinton’s crafty, straight-talking campaign manager dominates this absorbing but basically unrevelatory behind-the-scenes look at the former Arkansas governor’s long push for the presidency. Read full review

It's great to watch characters in The War Room operating as most of us do -- by the seat of their pants. Read full review

Part drama, part civics lesson, part entertainment, it sustains our deep curiosity despite the forgone knowledge of how things turn out. Read full review

Whether your political persuasion is Democratic, Republican, or somewhere in between, The War Room offers a fascinating insider's look at the turbulent 1992 Presidential campaign. Anyone with any interest in politics or elections will be engrossed, so it's a pleasure to note that the directors plan a followup in 1996. Read full review

Made with a flashy hit-and-run-style, the documentary too often tries to record too much of the overall campaign, instead of concentrating more on the details of insider baseball-or, as it were, the fun-and-war games. Read full review

Veteran documentarians D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus make fine use of traditional verite techniques--hand-held cameras, extended long takes--to create a compelling, dramatic portrait that should appeal to anyone with even the slightest interest in the political process. Read full review

There are thrills and cliffhangers galore, even though everyone now knows the outcome of the tale, and chief wheeler-dealer James Carville emerges as a zesty screen personality. [12 Nov 1993, p.12]

This is a movie about a process, not about who should be president or why. On that level, it's informative, smart and surprisingly entertaining - the best thing of its kind since Robert Altman covered the 1988 presidential follies with his mostly fictional "Tanner '88." [7 Jan 1994, p.D22]

The War Room is far more interesting, however, as an unintentional commentary on the evolving (or de-evolving) nature of documentary itself, and on Pennebaker's famous style - the shaky hand-held shots, the grainy film stock, the abrupt zooms and changes in focus. The style is known as cinema verite, the very name suggesting that what you see is spontaneous and "true." [12 Jan 1994, p.36]

Pennebaker, a veteran documentarian who has filmed concerts (``Monterey Pop''), Bob Dylan on tour (``Don't Look Back'') and political showdowns (``Crisis,'' about the battle between John F. Kennedy and George Wallace over desegregation at the University of Alabama), works in purist cinema-verite style. Camera and sound record what happens, the film is edited, music is added, and that's it. There's no Voice of God narrator, and not much in the way of context. When this technique really works, it can be as raw as life. When the filmmakers aren't so lucky, it comes off as sketchy, focused more on sensations than information. [6 Feb 1994, p.B01]

Democrats will enjoy The War Room more than anyone: Other parties unavoidably receive short shrift here, and Bush barbs (some of them hilariously pointed) fly constantly. Regardless of your party ties, however, The War Room is riveting viewing -- proof once again that when it comes to politics, the movies have nothing over reality. [26 Feb 1994, p.G5]

An entertaining look under the tent flaps of the Clinton campaign, "The War Room" fairly bristles with the frenetic energy, flat-out fun and Southern-fried cunning that won the White House. It's a documentary, though not a hard-hitting one, about presidential politics as reinvented by Bill Clinton's cagey generals, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville. Read full review

THE WAR ROOM would have been a great motion picture if either James Carville or George Stephanopoulos had been elected president - or if there were more involvement of Bill Clinton. Although none of those occurred, the documentary on the 1992 campaign, from the Democratic side, is interesting, sometimes amusing and always has a sense of immediacy.[14 Jan 1994, p.7F]

But the focus is way too far over on the side of personalities. There's scant political revelation: it's less behind-the-scenes than the scenes from a different perspective. Read full review

An entertaining if humdrum 1993 documentary...Seeing the actual deliberations behind image making has a certain built-in interest, but I expected more surprises. Read full review

Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]

While hardly the sensation its hype promises, the D.A. PennebakerChris Hegedus documentary The War Room offers some droll glimpses behind the scenes at the workings of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign and its twin masterminds, Cajun firebrand James Carville and cucumber-cool George Stephanopoulos. [4 Feb 1994, p.L26]

The film feels as if it has a huge gap in it and the name of the gap is Bill Clinton. Who is this man who would be, and became, president? The film has no idea; Clinton himself is glimpsed occasionally, a completely charming fellow who can handle a press conference superbly, but who somehow is never there. As Carl Cannon wrote in The Sun's Sunday Perspective section, "It's as basic as this: Can his word be trusted?" The movie never bothers to confront such an issue or even, really, to acknowledge it; in documenting the Democrats, it clearly comes to share their uncritical view of the Hamlet-Bubba who carries their standard...Like the campaign itself, then, it's far too tightly wound up in details to examine a larger picture, which in the end may be the problem. [18 Feb 1994]