War Game

While the presence of cameras and White House replica sets bring a touch of theatricality to proceedings, everyone taking part is fully committed to the exercise.

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

This was fascinating, urgent and important.

If that’s not scary enough, “War Game” shows how social media and TV news could be weaponized against the legitimate government.

The participants are fully invested in their roles, responding to the threat and increasing pressure as if the future of our democracy truly was on the line. Because it is.

Ably taps into a gathering darkness present in society, but seems to have no thesis, one way or another, on whether American identity, and indeed the American experiment, can survive the savvy machinations of those who vilify democracy for personal gain.

I left War Game with questions about the exercise’s purpose. I didn’t learn much and I’m not sure anyone in the situation room did either. That said, for capturing the precarity of the US government in such scary circumstances, this is worth your time.

The nail-biting docu-thriller War Game imagines how a sitting administration might respond to another insurrection far more serious than the previous one.

This provides a lot of food for thought.

A curious film that freely speculates on possible future events.