This is the most amazing documentary I've ever seen. It's basically talking heads, with some visuals shown as McNamara talks over a Philip Glass score. Director Morris sits down with the 87-year-old Robert S. McNamara, who was the United States Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and one of those responsible for American involvement in the Vietnam War. He barely touches on that, the most controversial aspect of his career. It should have been boring--it was riveting. McNamara was still sharp--and inadvertently self-revealing. ( )

Errol Morris, the mad scientist of American documentary filmmaking, has masterminded a stream of innovative and completely distinctive works. Though his latest, The Fog of War, is conventional in structure, its subject, Robert McNamara, is anything but. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, was the architect of the Vietnam War — he's the man who famously applied mathematical principles to the battlefield. But The Fog of War is no by-the-numbers history piece; McNamara is the sole voice in the film, and he's surprisingly frank, at one point equating his actions to war crimes. The Fog of War is both an indelible portrait of a major historical figure and a revelatory examination of America's use of military force, then and now. (JS) 95 mins.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/