Review: 'Death of a Nation' blames liberals for everything
It must be election season: Dinesh D'Souza is back and as amateurish as ever
Dinesh D'Souza repays his debt to Donald Trump with "Death of a Nation," an inflammatory love letter to the president that roundly blames the political left for the lion's share of humankind's atrocities.
It's familiar territory for D'Souza, the filmmaker whose embarrassingly amateurish "documentaries" (he's made one every two years going back to 2012) are non-veiled tools of right-wing propaganda. Even taking politics out of it — which is difficult in a film that argues Hitler was a liberal and compares Trump to Ghandi and Nelson Mandela — D'Souza's docs are ham-handed and incompetent, favoring chintzy re-creations, irresponsible scare tactics and tourism video-quality shots (waves crashing, sunrises over small town churches) to hammer home his vision of America.
D'Souza, who was pardoned by Trump earlier this year for his felony conviction on illegal campaign contribution charges in 2014, stars in and narrates this film that is timed to coincide with the primaries and the upcoming mid-term elections and rally the Republican base. (In the film, D'Souza takes credit for "playing a role" in Trump's election with his 2016 film, "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.")
Among D'Souza's arguments: the Ku Klux Klan has roots as "the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic party"; the Nazi platform could be read at the Democratic National Convention to "thunderous applause"; Democrats today enact modern slavery plans in the "black ghettos" and "Latino barrios" of almost every major city. Very fun, very chill stuff.
D'Souza quotes Hitler (played by Pavel Kríz) in one scene as saying, "if you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." It’s a concept D’Souza has taken to heart.
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'Death of a Nation'
GRADE: D-
Rated PG-13: for strong thematic material including violence/disturbing images, some language and brief drug use
Running time: 109 minutes