Take some film footage of President George W. Bush visiting Chicago, slap on some phony interviews, and the result is Death of a President, directed by Gabriel Range. After disclaimers, the movie begins on October 19, 2007. Actual film footage is interspersed with comments by those who provided security, a speechwriter, and police. The motorcade supposedly is forced to take an alternate route when protestors put up a human barricade on the original route. Bush arrives at the Chicago Sheraton, gives a speech, and decides to greet the public outside the hotel. Two sniper shots hit the president, who subsequently dies. Now the assassin must be tracked down, and the usual suspects are rounded up. Jamal Abu Zikri (played by Malik Bader), a Syrian computer engineer, is falsely charged as the assassin in a rush to judgment, thanks to the media, stereotyping of those who appear Islamic, and fixing facts to fit predetermined conclusions. The new president, Dick Cheney, then uses the event to go after Syria. A title at the end says that a police investigator resigned afterward, presumably because he found a more likely assassin, Frank Molini (played by Jay Whittaker)--but too late. A title then indicates that Patriot Act III passed shortly thereafter, making permanent the various sunseted provisions in I and II, thereby making the United States into more of a police state. What could have been an excellent script, in other words, is formulaic—a composite of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Osvald and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan--at minimum production cost. Nevertheless, as if to confirm the civil liberties issues raised in the film, film distribution of Death of a President has been turned down by major theater chains à la The Manchurian Candidate (1962). As an effort to predict what the Bush-Cheney juggernaut will do next, the Political Film Society has nominated Death of a President as best film of 2006 serving to promote democratic over nondemocratic values. MH
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