Review – Wag the Dog

Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro head up an ensemble cast in true Barry Levinson style. Loosely based on American Hero by Larry Beinhart, the film version drops a lot of the noir-wannabe nonsense and plays up the sarcastic sniping at media manipulation of America’s patriotic impulses (with obvious parallels to the Gulf War, which was the McGuffin of the book). Woody Harrelson is especially funny as the briefly-appearing accidental hero of an imaginary war. This is the meanest film I’ve seen in awhile (especially if you don’t count Citizen Ruth, which was meaner and also more consistently funny). Worth seeing