War Made Easy (2007)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 17
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 957
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Movie Info
Author Norman Soloman teams with activist/actor Sean Penn to encourage critical thinking about media spin during wartime by introducing viewers to the techniques of war propaganda and seeing just how those techniques have been implemented from Vietnam to Iraq. Based on the best-selling book of the same title, War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death exposes the practice of promoting a prolonged policy of intrusive militarism under the patriotic banner of the "War on
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All Critics (18) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (2) | DVD (2)
makes its timely arguments with passion and conviction.
Top CriticConventional and one-sided.
War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death is a depressing look at political manipulation and news media compliance.
The doc is sobering, straightforward, and a bit drab, but to the participants' credit, it's also an entirely nonpartisan endeavor.
Makes a strong case that when it comes to military action, the American public has been deceived by presidents from Lyndon Johnson on down the line to the current occupant of the White House.
While the film is intensely skeptical of the power elite, it has a refreshing faith in democracy.
Killing for peace as analagous to fornicating for virginity.
It's too top heavy and just not clean.
A hard-hitting documentary against the madness of war and the failure of journalists to speak truth to power.
At only 73 minutes, the documentary is nowhere as detailed as Solomon's invaluable book but see it anyway, and don't get fooled again.
Penetrating study of how the news media allowed themselves to be used as war propagandists in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Killing for peace cleverly compared to fornicating for virginity.
War Made Easy contributes a significant argument and does a good enough job in a limited way.
The arguments seem worth considering and the film makes for provocative viewing.
If you're a news junkie, you'll find nothing new: if not, this nicely-edited and eminently watchable doc will open your eyes.
No distractions, no theatrics, no colorful personalities, just an efficiently produced documentary with a simple, direct and compelling argument.
War Made Easy is an engrossing bit of finger-pointing, ushering in another fascinating shade to the world's current woes, not to mention a devastating portrait of fallacy that grows stronger by the gunshot.
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Foreign Titles
- War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (DE)
- War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (UK)
This film is not a panacea of revolutionary information. However like a book called The Pretorian Guard by former Pentagon Offical John Stockwell, it peels the wallpaper back a bit. When one accumulates enough glimpses of what lies behind, it is possible to extrapolate and acquire some idea of the big picture. This film provides one such glimpse, and a few intellectual tools for interpreting the programming we are all exposed to.