Path to War (2002)

(Mostly Washington D.C.; January 1965- early 1968)

John Frankenheimer’s dramatically solid rendering of the Johnson administrations ill-fated slide into the Vietnam War. Michaell Gambon makes an excellent Lyndon Johnson, despite being English I don’t know who else could have played him, he has the right face, the right build, and even managed not to overplay the accent. (Of course and Englishman playing a U.S. President in a movie is nothing new, there were two American presidents depicted in the 1997 movie Amistade, and both were played by veteran British actors.) Also notable is Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, this is an actor who just fascinating as the kind of stuffed shirt character that would boar or a be a caricature in lesser hands. Also Felicity Huffman was an unexpected but fine choice for the part of Lady Bird Johnson.

Anybody with a basic knowledge of history knows the story of this movie, at least in broad outline. Now the story of Johnson, like the story of his successor Richard Nixon, is American Shakespear. Here is a man who had the potential for greatness, even had greatness, but lost it do to a flaw. Now this flaw isn’t Nixon’s flaw, because we get the sense that Johnson felt comfortable in his own skin, something Nixon may never have. In fact, as pointed out by Clark Clifford (Donald Sutherland) in the movie, that Johnson flaw seemed to go against the man’s own historic political instincts. He just felt he couldn’t lose face on Vietnam, that he was obligated even when failure seemed all but inevitable. Johnson gave up much of his ‘Great Society’ for the self-destructive experience that was American involvement in the Vietnam war, and as this movie and I think history implies, he never got over it, but then again how could he. ‘Path to War’ is no ‘Nixon’ but its as good as your likely to get in a made-for-tv format.

Note: Gary Sinise reprises unbilled his Emmy winning role of George Wallace from the mini-series ‘Wallace’.