The Unknown Known

Directed by Errol Morris

(PG-13)

***

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“If conversation were a contact sport,” Donald Rumsfeld “would win on points,” said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. The former U.S. defense secretary has a reputation for deftly deflecting troublesome questions, and the evidence of this engaging documentary is that “no one can lay a glove on him.” Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris sure tries, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. In 2003’s The Fog of War, he got Rumsfeld predecessor Robert McNamara to admit that U.S. policy in Vietnam was deeply misguided. But Rumsfeld proves to be such a different animal that the attempt to establish the facts about his career and role in leading the U.S. invasion of Iraq develops into “a bracing and invigorating philosophical skirmish”: The cagey Washington player is at least as committed to the indeterminacy of truth as Morris is to uncovering it. Unfortunately, Morris too often just lets Rumsfeld tell the story as he wants to, frustrating concerned viewers, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. “We might have journeyed inside Rumsfeld’s mind-set for a while, but are we richer for the excursion?”