The Trials of Henry Kissinger: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

(Originally published 2002)

Directed by Eugene Jarecki, written by Alex Gibney, based on the book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens, 80 minutes, not rated.

Of all the questions raised in Eugene Jarecki's stinging documentary "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," the most damning against Kissinger are those that condemn him as a war criminal.

Directly charging him with mass murder, the film colors Kissinger, winner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, as a secretive, paranoid, duplicitous megalomaniac whose quest for power was put before our country's best interests and who rose to political superstardom while literally--the movie claims--getting away with decisions that left hundreds of thousands dead in Vietnam, Chile, Cambodia and East Timor.

The film, which screenwriter Alex Gibney based on Christopher Hitchens' book, presents both sides of the case against Kissinger, using a series of interviews with such Kissinger supporters as Gen. Alexander Haig and such detractors as William Safire and Brent Scowcroft, there's no denying that it’s slanted against the former secretary of state, that the undercurrent is ugly and that the atmosphere is akin to a lynching.

Bolstering its blistering tone are facts culled from archival footage and government documents declassified by Clinton in 1998, when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London for his involvement in the 1973 assassination of Chilean president Salvador Allende.

As the film painstakingly points out, it was Kissinger who formally approved of the coup that led to Allende's death and, in turn, to Pinochet's rise to power. Also revealed and documented are Kissinger’s involvement in the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and how he made certain in 1975 that Indonesia had all the U.S. weapons it needed to carry out its invasion of East Timor, which resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.

As narrated by an icily detached Brian Cox--who, it must be said, likely got the job because he’s best known for his portrayal of serial killer Hannibal Lecter in 1986's "Manhunter"--the film demands that its audience be fully up to speed on all of the events it covers.

Unlike the recent documentary "Bowling for Columbine," it has no patience for those who aren't intimately familiar with its subject. Instead, it immediately launches audiences into the heart of Kissinger's bloody mine fields, which some will likely appreciate but which others, such as younger viewers coming to the film without any concrete understanding of the times or the events that clouded them, might find isolating and confusing.

Peppered with a handful of breezy pop tunes that add a weird buoyancy to what's otherwise a dark tale of evil, the film’s treatment of Kissinger is unbalanced, for sure, but there's no denying its timeliness or, for that matter, Kissinger’s own enduring relevance.

Last November, President Bush appointed the former diplomat to head an independent commission to investigate what went wrong with U.S. intelligence in the months and days preceding Sept. 11.

It was a decision that ignited a media firestorm and found such critics as David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, blasting Bush and Kissinger in his November 27 Capital Games column. “Asking Henry Kissinger to investigate government malfeasance or nonfeasance is akin to asking Slobodan Milosevic to investigate war crimes,” Corn wrote. “This is a sick, black-is-white, war-is-peace joke--a cruel insult to the memory of those killed on 9/11 and a screw-you affront to any American who believes the public deserves a full accounting of government actions or lack thereof.”

A month later--in spite of vowing he wouldn’t bow to political pressure--Kissinger, looking frail, stepped down from the post.

Grade: B