I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is an Errol Morris documentary where he interviews former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This is part lesson, part history, but mostly a confessional. It has stock photos and archival footage to lay out the history. It has the compelling original score by Philip Glass.What makes this compelling is the ultimate insider who is making a confessional of his life's lessons. Errol Morris takes this gem and polish it up with his editing, his ethereal questioning, and Philip Glass' music. It is a haunting portrait of somebody who is now gone. This basically serves as his last testimony.

I am hoping that the death of Robert McNamara today will motivate more people to see this film. It changed my view of the man, and of history, and I am more than a little shocked at those who say it had no effect on them whatsoever.The "eleven lessons" of which some are complaining, in my opinion, are a mechanism to provide structure to the film, and to move from topic to topic. They prevent the film from being 90 uninterrupted minutes of "talking head", and (again IMO) are not really the point of the film in and of themselves. There's no quiz at the end; you have missed it, somehow.If you think of McNamara's brilliance as a tool to be used to achieve some end, it boggles the mind how many different and better ways history could have turned out. JFK had the right instinct to hire this brilliant man (and he didn't even seem to care for which post); Johnson made the mistake of not listening to him, and instead turning that brilliance to the task of tilting at a really big windmill. McNamara's willingness to do his regular level best in pursuit of a policy that even he thought was wrong -- well, there's the real tragedy.The "what if" games you can play with this are endless. If McNamara had stayed at Ford, then a lesser man would have done a poorer job at pressing a bad policy (thus ending the war earlier), and we'd probably all have 100mpg (or flying) cars by now.Left, right, or center -- this is a "must see" film. Think what you will of McNamara (and you will), but I don't think one person in a million would give us such an unblinking view of his own life's events; everyone should admire at least that much about the man.

I really can't say how impressed I was with this film. The question here is who was directing who?This is a primary record of history as important as any other document on film I have ever scene.Diem being assassinated and Kennedy also soon after makes one wonder if maybe the stars were against us anyhow. I can remember the summer of 1963. All we were concerned about at the time was if we would beat the Russians to the moon. It was the better part of the cold war.Oh well.History can be so much rubbish except to those who will repeat it's mistakes.

The Fog of War is a valuable record of history and the life of the brilliant and controversial Robert S. MacNamara. The documentary, brilliantly told, recounts the life of MacNamara from his middle-class beginnings to Harvard, his role as an aide to General LeMay in WW2 in the aerial bombings of Japan, his rise in Ford Motors during the 1950's culminating in him replacing Henry Ford for all of one week before resigning to join President Kennedy as Secretary of Defence. The bulk of the documentary deals with the next seven years of the cold war and MacNamara's recounting of the Cuban missile crisis and gradually sinking into the morass that was Vietnam. MacNamara eventually resigned or was asked to and headed a little organization called the World Bank for about a decade. He was well and truly the stuff leaders are made of. He is quite candid and does admit to errors made in assessing Vietnam without fully apologizing or calling it a mistake. He describes the horrifying aerial bombings of 67 Japanese cities and confesses that if they had lost the war, he and LeMay would have been tried as war criminals. MacNamara also elicits some sympathy and almost seems human when he breaks down while describing Kennedy's assassination and his responsibility in choosing an appropriate burial spot. MacNamara was close to the action in some of the defining events of the 20th century. A brilliant mind and eloquent speaker even in his mid-80's, he communicates very effectively and is interesting to watch as he recounts historic events.Errol Morris is the greatest documentary film-maker of our times or possibly ever and knows how to present the vast amount of material he worked with (apparently over 20 hours of interviews with MacNamara over a two year period). There is none of that Michael Moore style personal interference in the narrative. Its all told dispassionately, yet Morris's anti-war message does come through quite clearly. Morris has dug up a lot of historic footage, created some footage to help the narrative along and made a brilliant decision to use Phillip Glass's minimalist score.This documentary left me reeling for a few days and it really expands the mental horizons and gives a vivid perspective on various historic events. Its also very entertaining and fluid viewing. Cinema doesn't get much better (or informative) than this.