Daniel Ellsberg is a brilliant and impassioned military analyst who wants nothing more than to serve his country in the most meaningful way he can. However in the end it seems that his greatest act of patriotism is to commit an act of treason.
Sounds like gripping stuff, the kicker is that it is all based on real life events. Now these types of docudramas can go horridly wrong all too easily in so many ways, however "The Pentagon Papers" manages to cleverly avoid most of these. Half of this is down to a solid script and the other primarily to the director for clearly thinking his decisions through to completion and creating a cohesive film on the whole.
Now I have to confess that I am a fan of James Spaders' work and find him to be a very under rated actor over the whole. Now that being said he does do an admirable job of chronicling the characters proverbial decent into madness (if you will forgive the dramatized language) as he goes from being a trusted insider only three steps removed from the president to being branded a traitor and hunted by the F.B.I.
The movie has some shortcomings and most of them I feel are likely due to time constraints placed on made for TV movies. They could, for instance, have easily taken time to develop the gaps in the story some more. Specifically in terms of the inter personal relationships portrayed and in terms of Elsberg's ever increasing sense of disillusionment in the government he believed in so vehemently just a few years before. As it seems at times, though years have passed in the time line, nothing has really changed for the characters.
That having been said I am of the opinion that the film does capture the general feeling of mistrust in the government that was so prevalent during the early seventies, as more and more revelations of the abuse of power at the highest levels and the lies that were being fed to the public to justify even greater lies became known. Although it is all related from very personal perspectives.
One of the strongest elements was the visual style employed by the director. I was constantly reminded of Oliver Stone in that respect. The uses of period news broadcasts are very cleverly deployed throughout the movie.
So do yourself a favor and watch "The Pentagon Papers", it can be both enlightening and entertaining, definitely 90 odd minutes well spent.
