As "Year One: A Political Odyssey" (2022 release; 85 min) opens, it is "January 20, 2021" and Biden is sworn in while Trump, disgraced and the Biggest Loser ever, breaks with 245 years of precedents and refuses to attend. Soon thereafter Biden faces the on-going COVID pandemic (comments one official: "In December we asked what is the plan. There was no plan"). At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the movie.
Couple of comments; this is the latest documentary from well respected director John Maggio {"The Perfect Weapon"). He is given broad access to many of the top people in the Biden administration. While the movie title refers to Year One, it covers in fact the initial 14 months of the Biden presidency (through late March of 2022), which can be very broadly summed up in 3 challenges: COVID, Afghanistan, and Russia. The debacle that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrates that even competent people can make very bad and unexpected miscalculations. When viewing a documentary like this, it isn't always easy to distinguish between the politics you agree or disagree with and whether the documentary is in fact any good. Please don't be fooled by the overall terrible rating of this movie here on IMDb (3.4 as of today), which without a doubt are the results of ratings given by trolls (Russian and/or Trumpist trolls, if they can be distinguished) who haven't seen the documentary.
"Year One: A Political Odyssey" premiered on HBO and HBO Max last night (I caught it on HBO Max). If you have an interest in (geo)politics or are simply in the mood for a decent documentary, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.
