Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story

For a film that depends so heavily on talking heads, it has both a dramatic arc and a sense of character development.

A hugely entertaining, efficiently crafted documentary about a ruthless, if undeniably clever, American political force.

Boogie Man doesn't delve too deep into its subject's private life, beyond some cheap psychology positing his brother's horrible early death as the root of his winner-takes-all philosophy. But then, Atwater's work was his life.

Boogie Man is nonetheless required viewing for anyone obsessed with the 2008 race.

Less persuasive is Forbes's perfunctory, psychologically thin rummage through Atwater's childhood for a traumatic event that would explain his utter ruthlessness.

If there were a liberal equivalent to Fox News (no, not MSNBC, which is so much milk-fed veal to Rupert Murdoch's steak tartare), Boogie Man is the sort of programming it would thrive on.

A documentary that uses against Atwater images of lynch mobs, decades-old racist comments of his onetime boss Strom Thurmond, and a clip of Bryant Gumbel calling him "the architect of the evil campaign."