Movie Review: The Special Relationship

This movie tells the story of the “special relationship” between Bill Clinton and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Dennis Quaid does an excellent job as Bill Clinton. He looks the part, and the voice is superb. I closed my eyes and I heard Clinton. And Michael Sheen as Tony Blair is eerie. At the end of this movie, as George W. Bush had started his term, it shows real television footage of a press conference between Bush and Blair, and the real-live Blair looks oddly wrong – Sheen looked more real than Blair himself by then.

We follow Clinton through his presidency, watch him squirm through the Lewinsky-affair period and observe what goes on behind the scenes regarding Kosovo and going after Milosevic.

We see Blair in the bathtub, speculating about Clinton with his wife, getting dressed in the bathroom. Blair sits in his kitchen with his kids eating breakfast when he sees Clinton on TV confessing that there was inappropriateness in his behavior with Lewinsky. Blair walks around his house in his underwear, talking to Clinton on  the phone, while Clinton pokes around in the refrigerator in the White House kitchen. They address each other as Bill and Tony. I always wondered how this works.

What does Obama call Putin?

I don’t know about the documentary value of this film, or the historical accuracy. I do know that I enjoyed very much the  look behind the curtains of major statesmanship and how things are getting done when world leaders do the acting.

Rating: ***

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