Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (2008)
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Reviews Counted: 29
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 2
Boogie Man is a complex, absorbing study of the contradictory life and times of architect of modern smear politics.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 2
Boogie Man is a complex, absorbing study of the contradictory life and times of architect of modern smear politics.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 377
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Movie Info
Boogie Man documents the life of political strategist Lee Atwater, whose take-no-prisoners style of campaigning helped win George Herbert Walker Bush the presidency. The lessons from that campaign, learned by others such as Karl Rove, informed the tactics that led to Bush's son also occupying the Oval Office. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
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All Critics (31) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (27) | Rotten (2)
Director Stefan Forbes has assembled a brilliantly complex portrait that shines an unnerving light on the man who painted the landscape of contemporary American politics.
Top CriticBy the end of Forbes' brisk, economical portrait, Atwater has been revealed as a repugnant and pathetic soul--and a political visionary, among the first to fully understand and harness the raw power of voters' fears.
Stricken with brain cancer in 1990, Atwater renounced his Machiavellian ways, but as Forbes points out, his legacy lives on in his eager proteges Karl Rove and George W. Bush.
Boogie Man is a fascinating portrait of an almost likable rogue.
Instead of attempting a character study, Boogie Man returns an indictment.
Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy, and the pic is sure to win votes in election season with specialty distribs and public tube mavens.
Fascinating to a political junkie like me who wasn't aware of the game back then.
A morality tale about the sewer politics of the Republican Party since Reagan and very relevant to the 2008 elections.
A cinematic smear job against Atwater would be the easiest thing in the world, but Forbes is more interested in presenting a complex character study than a piece of liberal agitprop.
Conventional but absorbing.
Both fascinating and upsetting, and makes you wish politics weren't so, well, political.
Positively brims over with sour-grapes hearsay and character assassination. But you just know he deserved it, right?
Lee Atwater is remembered as brilliant or shameful, effective or destructive, his life part American Dream, part horror movie.
Boogie Man does not inspire pity for Atwater but sadness that a man of such talent wasted his life and learned his lesson too late.
electrifying
It's refreshing to see a political documentary that's not just boosterism or political propaganda. If anything, this is an argument for 'cleaner' campaigning.
Audience Reviews for Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
Super Reviewer
For those less fascinated with politics and Karl Rove and such this may be much less exciting. Overall it's a good but not great documentary if you're not interested in the topic but if you are, it's amazing and enthralling.
Worth a view either way but don't get your hopes up if politics doesn't tickle your fancy.
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