Interview. Gabriel Range.

"Death of a President, the documentary-style speculative fiction about the assassination of the 43rd President of the United States, is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W Bush's role in the world today, and his place in the wider scope of history," wrote Jim Emerson last month. Now at the main site, John Esther talks with director Gabriel Range.

Related: "The idea provokes, the computer tinkering of archival images startles, but the overall impact, argument, and narrative are as dithering as the past six years of Democratic opposition," writes Peter Keough, who also interviews Range for the Boston Phoenix.

Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader: "Death of a President wants to function as a mindless thriller that eventually makes us think - and only after the film is over question the form that encouraged us to be mindless. These are incompatible agendas, and in the end neither is fully successful."

AO Scott in the New York Times: "The best that can be said about Mr Range's opportunistic little picture is that, at least in its first half, it faithfully recreates the tone and rhythm of a second-rate American television program."

"In a way, it's as much an advertisement for allowing Bush to finish out his term as the words 'President Cheney,'" writes Sam Adams in the Philadelphia City Paper. "Range begins with an outlandish premise and works steadily back toward the center.... The movie's biggest problem isn't what it imagines, but what it fails to."

"When Fipresci (The International Federation of Film Critics) gave a prize to Death of the President at this year's Toronto Film Festival, citing 'the audacity with which it distorts reality,' it was a film journalism catastrophe," declares Armond White in the New York Press.

Andrew Wright in the Stranger: "When judged against the real-life outlandishness piling up on a near-daily basis, this what-if scenario can't really measure up. Bring on the ray-gun-toting aliens."

Writing at Guru, Craig Phillips finds the film "convincing but not exactly radical.... Perhaps its overall lack of impact is the scariest aspect: The scenarios presented here are all too believable."

"Range turns out to be a painfully weak political filmmaker," finds Nerve's Bilge Ebiri.

Earlier: Filmbrain and David D'Arcy.

Update: Robert B Reich hasn't seen the film, but writes in the American Prospect nonetheless: "I'm a libertarian when it comes to what people can see or hear but this film tests my libertarian principles. This is exploitive trash. To release it just days before a mid-term election is shameless."

Daniel Robert Epstein talks with Range for SuicideGirls.

In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Cheryl Eddy recalls past presidential assassinations in the movies.

At Slate: "Dear Prudence, I am a twentysomething American musician living in Europe.... I'll meet a group of people, we'll chat about two minutes, and someone will make some comment about how my president should be killed (really!).... I'm still not sure what the best response is to this statement. I don't want to share my politics with a complete stranger, and I don't want to do anything to further any American stereotypes they already have. However, I want to convey how this statement is inappropriate and makes me uncomfortable."

Ray Pride at Movie City Indie: "[W]hile DOAP proposes the existential quandary of a fear of 'terrorists' dictating entirely the course of a country's decisions, the film's follow-through, while compelling, never reaches the heights of irresponsibility attained by numberless politicians and business leaders."

Slate's Dana Stevens: "It's the Joe Lieberman of fake documentaries."

Posted by dwhudson at October 27, 2006 1:52 AM