Path to War

Path to War (2003) — watch online on iFILM — is director John Frankenheimer's final film, an HBO drama about Lyndon Johnson's descent into the Vietnam quagmire. Michael Gambon plays LBJ with a physical gravity: a president who arrived in office promising the Great Society and watched it drown under the weight of a war he chose to escalate rather than own.

The film barely leaves the West Wing. Advisors push Johnson forward meeting by meeting, each increment of escalation smaller than it looks in the moment. Donald Sutherland is Secretary of Defense McNamara, Alec Baldwin plays aide Jack Valenti, Gary Sinise appears as Robert Kennedy — each pulling in a different direction as the body count in Southeast Asia climbs past any number Johnson's team had once called catastrophic.

Frankenheimer died in July 2002, shortly after completing production. Path to War is a fitting close: controlled, politically precise, and more interested in how good institutions produce disasters than in assigning blame. Stream it on iFILM.