Review: Shock and Awe

One often takes for granted how certain films retain their reputation for greatness until one sees how another film, working in the same vein, mucks it up. Such is the case with Shock and Awe, which aims to be this era's All the President's Men, still the undisputed gold standard by where films about crusading journalism is concerned.

Unlike last year's The Post, an excellent prequel to Alan J. Pakula's classic, Shock and Awe works in, and never rises above, a minor and mediocre chord. The narrative should be inherently compelling - two reporters uncovering the Bush administration's hidden agenda behind the Iraq War after 9/11 - but the film is diluted of urgency, so distracted is it with tangential and often unnecessary sub-plots. It is a shame, considering that it has all the necessary ingredients to be a good entry into this particular genre and, given the current climate of fake news and the struggle to hold the government accountable, a very missed opportunity.

Though the term "fake news" was birthed in the Trump era, it was already in existence decades before when the Bush administration successfully sold America's entry into the Iraq War based on the tenuously supported reason that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That the majority of news outlets bought into and helped to propagate without fully validating the information the administration was dispensing and, when questions were asked, chose to believe the spin rather than report the truth was a troubling reminder that lessons had not been learned from mistakes previously made.

There was, of course, one single organisation that sought to preserve their journalistic integrity in the face of derision. That would be Knight Ridder, an agency that syndicated news to 32 newspapers nationwide. Their reporters, Jonathan Landay (Woody Harrelson) and Warren Strobel (James Marsden) would prove themselves "the only ones who got it right" - the administration wanted to go to war with Iraq and they made sure to have the intelligence to support that decision rather than gathering the intelligence and then making the decision. What's more, even though Osama Bin Laden was the perpetrator of 9/11, Bush and his minions were determined to focus on Iraq despite the knowledge that bin Laden was in hiding somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan. That unnecessary lives were lost or irreparably damaged as a result of falsehoods is not only chilling, it is outrageous.

Yet, the chill and outrage don't arrive until the end title cards. Screenwriter Joey Hartstone apparently didn't have confidence in his story or the real-life figures in that story. Characters like Tommy Lee Jones' veteran war reporter and correspondent are introduced and then mostly ignored; Luke Tennie's idealistic soldier turned injured veteran is written to blatantly tug on the heartstrings; Milla Jovovich and Jessica Biel turn up as the central duo's love interests - both essentially serve as sounding boards for the central duo. The dialogue alternates between crisp and clumsy, and the direction by Rob Reiner is certainly well-intentioned if uninspired.

Shock and Awe

Directed by: Rob Reiner

Written by: Joey Hartstone

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, James Marsden, Milla Jovovich, Jessica Biel, Rob Reiner, Richard Schiff, Al Sapienza