Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, James Carville

In this intensely observational documentary, filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker examines the inner workings of President Bill Clinton's first White House campaign in the early 1990s, focusing on the wizardry o...( read more  read more... )f James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. One of the founding members of the direct cinema movement, Pennebaker applies the genre's hallmarks of reality and truth to craft a fascinating portrait of modern American politics.

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82% liked it

1,657 ratings

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94% liked it

17 critics

PG, 1 hr. 33 min.

Directed by: Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker

Release Date: October 13, 1993

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DVD Release Date: November 10, 1998

Stats: 126 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (126)


  • May 17, 2007
    pretty good doc.
  • July 5, 2009
    hahahaha i've actually seen this
  • May 10, 2009
    You really get an idea of what a game politics is,
  • April 18, 2009
    behind the scene look at how clinton and his folks won an election he was suppose to lose.
  • February 24, 2009
    I remember after this every one went crazy over george stephanopolous
  • October 13, 2008
    its alright but won't be interesting if you are not interested in politics. Just some scenes just went flat and got boring.
  • October 2, 2008
    "The War Room" follows Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential election campaign from the Gennifer Flowers scandal (she was one of the lesser known women with whom Clinton did not-repeat-did not have sex) to the hurraying of the landslide victory.

    The two protagonists of the story ar...( read more)e campaign manager James Carville, who gets all teary-eyed about how Clinton is going to change the world, and
    communications director George Stephanopoulos, who considers that getting Clinton elected "was the best thing I ever did." Carville just happens to be married to Mary Matalin, who is the campaign manager for George Bush, the other candidate (what?)

    One of Carville's pro-Clinton's arguments is that if Bush got reelected, that would mean "tax breaks for the rich", which apparently are inherently wrong. But anybody who considers that "tax breaks for the rich" are wrong on principle, independent of the going tax rates, considers that the rich can never be taxed too much, whatever the rate, which is both evil and absurd. Of course, Carville is no political thinker: he is an ad man whose product happens to be politicians. His job is to get candidates elected by manipulating the opinions of the public, and if he appears to care passionately for the race, this is probably part of the work of getting the troops motivated. In a 2006 documentary, "Our Brand is Crisis", Carville is flown to Bolivia to get a very different sort of candidate elected. I'm sure he was just as passionate about him.

    "The War Room" shows you some of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of an election campaign, with Clinton's managers reacting to the moves of the Republicans, delivering pep talks to their team, anxiously waiting and then finally applauding when their candidate does all the hard work of smiling, waving and hugging for the TV cameras.

    As someone who believes that voting has about as much change of changing the world as peeing in a violin, and who has had enough of his own favorites elected to have learned his lesson, I watched this documentary with a mixture of boredom and consternation. If its goal was to convince its viewers of the seriousness of modern politics, then as far as I am concerned, it failed abysmally.
  • September 11, 2008
    fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary. it was also great to see the coining of the famous phrase, "it's the economy stupid."
  • May 30, 2008
    "Dont stop, thinking about tommorow"
  • November 18, 2007
    I'm a Clinton fan, so this was really interesting to watch. James Carville is such an intelligent man.

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