American Dharma

There's just not enough poking around in the Bannon-verse by Morris.

The movie's worth taking in, though, as a shaky confrontation with a very American kind of demon, one weaned on the shallow, heroic lies of Hollywood individualism, furious that life rarely works that way, and willing to wreck the house in response.

Kid-glove treatment of the former Donald Trump advisor is surprising coming from the hard-hitting interviewer of Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld.

Give 'em enough rope, as they say. It's become increasingly fashionable to twist or ignore facts, but it's still important to present them for all to see.

Bannon has trafficked in racism, far-right conspiracy theories and other controversies during his career. Morris brings up some of it... but rarely nails Bannon with a tough follow-up question.

American Dharma is a vivisection, and [ Errol] Morris gives Bannon the tools to do it himself.

We live in profoundly, dangerously stupid times; Morris’s film does nothing to clarify them or combat their architects.

Morris essentially provides this scandalmonger and inciter of racial and ethnic hatred a platform for most of the one and a half hours of the film.

It's commonly believed culture is a civilising influence but Bannon is the living refutation of that idea.

Unfortunately, Morris keeps his rebuttals to a career minimum in American Dharma -- bad timing, considering his subject is an active fire-starter, not a regretful, dried-out war hawk.