War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
	Film poster
Directed by	Loretta Alper; Jeremy Earp;
Written by	Loretta Alper; Jeremy Earp;
Based on	War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death; by Norman Solomon
Produced by	Loretta Alper
Narrated by	Sean Penn
Edited by	Andrew Killoy
Music by	John Van Eps; Leigh Phillips;
Production; company	Media Education Foundation
Release date	May 14, 2007;
Running time	72 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death is a 2007 American anti-war documentary film written and directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, based on the book of the same name by Norman Solomon. The film is produced by Alper and narrated by Sean Penn. It premiered in New York City on May 14, 2007, before a limited release on August 24, 2007.^[1]

Synopsis

The film attempts to expose how the American government over 50 years has tried to strum up war effort using the media as a tool. "War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq."^[2]

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 16 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10.^[3] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[4]

Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times stated, "Unsubtle, condensed and bullet-point simple, War Made Easy avoids fancy visuals for a uniformly drab and dispiriting aesthetic. Sporadically narrated by Sean Penn (evincing all the personality of a potato), the movie is cinematically inert if ultimately persuasive."^[5] V.A. Musetto of the New York Post criticized the film as "conventional and one-sided".^[6] Aaron Hillis wrote for The Village Voice that the film is "sobering, straightforward, and a bit drab, but... it's also an entirely nonpartisan endeavor".^[7] Variety critic Dennis Harvey credited "Solomon's astute onscreen analysis" for driving the film.^[1]