Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I expected little from this 'movie' but was pleasantly surprised. After all, it was a made for television mini series originally, it was about politics and U.S. ones at that, it was very long (both episodes were played as one cohesive piece in Queensland). On the plus side, it seemed to have an ideal cast, I like most of Alec Baldwin's work very much, I greatly admire Michael Gambon's work, Donald Sutherland needs no explanation as someone to watch, and that was just the beginning. Furthermore, I had seen the political drama "Nixon" not long ago and was greatly impressed by that (how could you not be with Anthony Hopkins at the helm); so things could have gone either way.Thankfully, my doubts were not realised and I can safely recommend this saga to any thinking person, particularly those of us like myself who actually experienced those times. I suspect to those born later it might seem somewhat like a 'boring' history lesson unless that moment in history bears any particular fascination.For Australians particularly it may be interesting as, just like with previous conflicts (World Wars I and II as well as Korea) and all wars since including Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and currently Afghanistan, we stood shoulder to shoulder with our American brothers in Vietnam, fighting and dying in battle. We knew why we as a nation were there in the thick of it, so it was very interesting indeed to see why America was there in the first place, and this docu-drama provided some of the answers.

When I saw this movie yesterday, I was struck by the language and how it echoed the arguments made now about the Iraq War. In fact, I thought certain phrases were inserted into this movie to criticize the Iraq war as they are the EXACT same things said today about the futility of the the US presence in Iraq, given how "liberals" Donald Sutherland and Alec Baldwin were involved in this project.Then I noticed this movie came out in 2002, BEFORE George Bush decided to invade Iraq.Path to War covers the period of time in US history from Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated in January, 1965 to March, 1968, when he announced he was not seeking a 2nd term for President. We get to view how LBJ was a champion for voting rights and committed to improving the lot of poor Americans with the Great Society. But the movie focuses on how the United States came to get drawn in and bogged down in the Viet Nam war, to the downfall of Johnson. It illustrates how Clark Clark Clifford went from being opposed to the war to being it's most vocal supporter, and how Robert McNamara went from promoting the war to being forced out as Secretary of Defense for coming to opposing the war. How Johnson was tentative about pursuing the war, micromanaging combat operations and the demoralizing effect the Tet Offensive had on this country. The movie has expertly woven in numerous television broadcasts, cartoons and other historic artifacts of the era to drive the point how the Johnson administration acted in carrying out the Viet Nam war and their effects.This is the movie to watch if you want to understand how the Viet Nam war came to be a large conflict with it's divisive effects on this country. It's a movie that should be required viewing for any future President ever contemplating a "small" foreign war in the future.

A TV movie about President Lyndon B. Johnson? A historical drama about his "suffering" during the Vietnam war escalation? Intriguing idea, like its attempt of resurrecting from the dust of last century the climate which generated Johnson's Great Society political project... A vision that failed, even if the movie closes celebrating its persistence before the end titles. More than everything else, this is a stage drama unlikely to stand the real, terrifying drama going on outside the "halls of power" -- namely, in the bombarded and famished country of Vietnam. In the face of such a massacre (of both Americans and Vietnamese), when we are told that some 58,000 marines and TWO MILLION Asiatics died in the last four years of the war only, there is no drawing room drama that can give justice to the "mess". This was no simple "mess", it was a genocide -- something one would have thought belonging to a bloodier, more cruel past, like a new extermination of Jews. Here, the "Jews" were the Communists from South-East Asia: Vietcong, women, oldsters & children alike. America lost much more than a bloody war in Vietnam; the film partially tries to show that (like in the impressive suicide scene of a man who burns alive under the very eyes of Robert McNamara at the Pentagon), but generally speaking "Path to War" remains more interested in the affairs going on between the male trio of its protagonists: LBJ, "Bob" McNamara (whose wife had ulcer, we learn) and Clark Clifford, the man who succeeded McNamara as Secretary of Defence (a marvelously saturnine Donald Sutherland). I realize this is a historical film tailored to suit American audiences: it's just as right that they ask questions about their past and the more controversial figures of their political life; but I can assure you that, when screened outside the U.S., the film looks more like the capable drawing room caper which I mentioned before, no matter if THIS drawing room is Oval and located at the White House. All this taken into account, it's a standing tribute to its director, John Frankenheimer, and to its leading players that the film "per se" succeeds in capturing our attention and sustaining it through 165 minutes of dialogue and interior sequences, like no ordinary TV movie would be even remotely capable of doing these days. It is, in just one word, a mature conception of a historical movie, sustained by brilliant performances ands a good screenplay... The real shame is that too many of us (especially the non-Americans?) best remember LBJ through the devastating portrait Jules Feiffer made of those years in its cartoons. Forty years later, Frankenheimer gives us a different thing to muse about: we accept it from his "maestro" hands -- with just a little reserve in the back of our minds.

A superb HBO Production directed by John Frankenheimer. Provocative and insightful. I don't vouch that the story is even-handed, but none the less informative, interesting and believable. President Johnson(Michael Gambon)painfully watches his plans for a "Great Society" crumble as the war in Viet Nam escalates. Most impressive is Alec Baldwin as Robert McNamara. Equally strong is Donald Southerland playing Clark Clifford. Also of note are:Bruce McGill, Tom Skerritt and Philip Baker Hall. This is well packed fodder for those still debating the Viet Nam Conflict. Highly recommended.