Who’s the Tail, Who’s the Dog? A Wag the Dog Movie Review
Socio-political satire “Wag the Dog” allows us to look into the events surrounding the final days before an American presidential election, where spin-doctor, Ronnie Brean (Robert De Niro) and Hollywood producer, Stan Motts (Dustin Hoffman) join efforts to fabricate a war that will cover up a Presidential sex scandal.
Director Barry Levinson plays his corner by eliciting inordinate performances from well cast Hollywood A-Listers, much like his Rain Man and Toys. Not only do leads, De Niro and Hoffman, deliver fresh performances that step out of their usual line of character, with De Niro as the emotionally detached lobbyist and Hoffman embodying Ray Stark, but audience stepping stone Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) is also delivered immaculately through her exaggerated anxiety and uncomfortably out of place appearance, seemingly translating how any sane person would feel in her shoes, something that her character seldom has any considerations with (strutting in heels through mud).
Like a well-off Levinson, the movie is star studded with cameos including Woody Harrelson as a Billy Bob Thornton-esque war hero, Kirsten Dunst as an actress hired to play an Albanian refugee which becomes the site of the fabricated war, William H. Macy as CIA agent Young, and Craig T. Nelson as Senator John Neal, the President’s challenger in the election.
With a script developed by David Mamet and Hilary Henkin, based on the “American Hero” by Larry Beinhart, the fast paced-dark comedy dialogue hits too close to home as it invites you to first laugh before leaving you wondering about the truth. One line stood out at the beginning of the film, where Brean tries to convince Motts to come to his aid by guaranteeing him a compensation in the form of an ambassadorship, something that anyone with any remote work experience in foreign affairs could attest to. The events of the film may have been loosely based on the US Invasion on Grenada during the late years of Reagan’s presidency, where Clint Eastwood later produced a movie and people tied yellow ribbons around trees to honour the troops, but it had also eerily predicted the Clinton-Lewinsky case ahead of its time.
Released in 1997, we can certainly affirm the quality of David Mamet’s scriptwriting. Having previously developed scripts for The Untouchables and Glengarry Glen Ross, his work is famous for its lean, gritty and often profane language possessed of such a singular rhythm that his dialogue has been dubbed ‘Mamet speak’, and he delivers exactly that with a twist in Wag the Dog. Every scene is written to answer: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? And why now?
This stark-raving straight to the point writing is met with Levinson’s obscurity, creating a blend of attention driving sequences. Scenes developed by the character’s actions and unnecessary details are dropped if they no longer serve a purpose without much regard to sentimentality. Seen through how the pilots of the plane were nowhere to be seen after it had crashed and that Hoffman’s character was disposed of without much fuss.
The movie appreciates the audience by not revealing every single detail, but acknowledging that the audience is indeed smart and capable of imagining scenarios of their own without being visually led. A powerful tool in establishing the movie’s premise in contemplating the ambiguous nature of accountability and transparency between the government and its peoples, mimicked in how we were never presented with the President’s face but only hear of words he presumably spoke or of actions he took.
Not only that, Wag the Dog cleverly reflects upon the dynamic between Hollywood and the Government, leaving one to even fret about which side it is that is taking the mick of which, which side really has power over the other or if an imbalance of power is even real? Something that could not have been more relevant in our current contemporary times, with the likes of the Trump supporting Kardashians and the Time’s Up movement.
A subtle downside does appear through its score, Mark Knopfler (Of Dire Strats) may have delivered brilliantly through his guitar work during the beginning of the movie, intensifying the scenes and highlighting a sense of urgency, giving one almost this necessity to get up and get going along with characters, its brilliance however seems to lower during the passage of time in the film. It does its job of highlighting the mood of the scene, but towards the end, especially in the desert after the plane crash, the score only dulls and lulls the audience, giving a slight headache as we struggle to still keep on with the fast paced dialogue. However, if you can recover from those moments, you will soon discover that the score manages to increase and regain its momentum.
“Why does a dog wag its tail?” Brean asks at one point. “Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If the tail was smarter, it would wag the dog.” Through this title statement and the movie, we the audience are invited to explore different scenarios where the people, elected officials, and Hollywood magnates are all fighting to take a turn at being the tail to lead on the dog, and even if you’re not interested in thinking so deeply, Wag the Dog will provide just about anyone with a good laugh.
