I so totally agree with the original poster. It was an offensively cartoonish portrayal of Rice and a weak attempt to make fun of her. Despite whatever opinion you have about the Bush administration, you have to agree this is just insulting to the person as they depict her as a mindless "yes man" to Bush with little depth, a Buckwheat like speaking voice and a grotesque insult to the gap in Rice's teeth. Yes she had limited screen time which was good, but that still meant I had to endure whatever lines she was given.
Honestly, the only actors I liked in the film were Brolin and Cromwell. As much as I like Richard Dreyfuss and Jeffrey Wright, their characters are so badly written that they become exaggerations of themselves no matter the view on their actions.
Even Brolin and Cromwell don't get away completely unscathed. The film seems to assume it can summarize everything about Bush's character with a simple father-son conflict and condescending scenes meant for us to point and laugh at a human being who did nothing more than try to do the toughest job in the United States. No he didn't do it perfectly, but what president is perfect? Along with that, the movie offered no insight, dragged on forever with uninteresting scenes, gave good actors bad dialogue and, worst of all, insult our intelligence by trying to sell itself as bi-partisan when it's obvious meant for the left. I don't think it's bad for a movie to try being so, but it shouldn't try to pretend to be something it's not.
The man, the mind, the master. That's me!
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tgemberl
16 years ago
I was bothered by Newton's role in the film, too. But I wonder if maybe the point was that Stone didn't feel he could devote much energy to developing the Rice character. He was more interested in Cheney, Powell, Tenet, and, to some extent, Rumsfeld.
The only serious bit of independent thinking you see on the character's part is when she points out early in the film that Iran has somewhat of a democratically elected government and so doesn't fit the "Axis of Evil" pattern that well.
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
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