DIRECTED BY Errol Morris
Opens April 2, Cert PG, 106 mins
As a WWII pilot, then later as Secretary of Defence under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Robert McNamara was privy to three of the most pivotal and terrible events of the past 60 years?the bombing of Hiroshima, the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam war. Although he sacrificed a potentially lucrative career in the private sector to work for Kennedy, he is regarded by many as a cold, charmless technocrat who applied the pragmatic values of big business to global politics. Here, Errol Morris (Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control, Mr Death) has succeeded in persuading McNamara, now in his late eighties but still gimlet-eyed, to put his side of the story, interspersed with documentary audio and visual footage.
Morris films his subject with a device called the Interrotron, enabling McNamara to stare directly to camera as he fields Morris’ questions, which are mostly edited out. This enables McNamara to appear as if he’s delivering a lecture