War Game

This film is a fascinating and dynamic investigation of American politics. It does more with the documentary form than I thought possible.

The first time I saw War Game, it shook me up; the second time, my visceral response was tempered by a skepticism about power that the movie doesn’t invite.

War Game is one of the more timely and disturbing movies of recent months.

War Game concentrates a lot on the “how to” part. But it also says a lot about how eerily easy and how horrifyingly relatable the “why” of it all is.

However stilted War Game may feel cinematically, it registers with full force as a realistic depiction of a nightmarish scenario that could easily occur just a few months from now.

As a simultaneously slick and provocative entertainment, “War Game” is chilling and a tad infuriating, offering a white-knuckle ride — “Civil War” for policy wonks — that may feel a bit too fresh in the memory for viewers who are still traumatized by the real thing.

By setting up such a potentially cataclysmic scenario and not convincingly illustrating how it could be resolved or stopped from occurring in the first place, War Game undercuts the very reason it was made.